WAR 05/18/2013 to 05/24/2013____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

Hummmm......Interesting....

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Strategic value of shock and shush raids

Analysis: Israeli airstrikes expose inherent weakness of its enemies, emptiness of their threats

Riccardo Dugulin
Published: 05.19.13, 10:06 / Israel Opinion

During the last couple of weeks, the concept of “shock and shush” has been widely discussed. The Israeli strategy of conducting surgical strikes against top tier targets is not a new one, but it has gained an incredible amount of attention due to the alleged targeting of military objectives inside Syria.

Since 1967 and most importantly since the elimination of the Iraqi nuclear threat, the Israeli Air Force has played a central role in the defense of the Jewish State by enhancing its power projection capabilities.

It is clear to anyone that since 1948, Israel has been living in a tough neighborhood where bigger and numerically far superior states and organizations have been merging forces in order to attack and harm the Jewish state. With greater national cohesion, technically superior weaponry and well-crafted tactics Israel has been able to rebuke its enemies each time they attempted to endanger its existence. One of the essential traits of the strategy used in almost all major engagements has been the element of surprise and the flexibility of the Israeli ground and air forces with the common objective of seizing the initiative and depriving the enemy of its capacity to dictate the course and the tempo of its actions.

The current strategy of strikes against key military assets of the Syrian regime is once again successful in depriving the enemies of Israel of the ability to coordinate any offensive action that may harm the Jewish state.

By conducting raids when it deems necessary to, the Jewish State issues a clear warning based on two points. On the one hand, it is made clear that the military superiority of the Israeli Defense Forces is close to absolute. The ability to control the air and to gather necessary information sets Israel above any of its regional adversaries.

Control public discourse

On the other hand, Israel exposes the inherent weakness and emptiness of its enemies’ threats. Regardless of the arrogance any of the regional regime shows in its taunts against the Jewish state, their inability to defend themselves and to respond in a conventional, state-led fashion represents their military inferiority and the shallowness of their propaganda.

It also, and maybe this represents the true added value of such raids, creates a sentiment of constant vulnerability in the hearts of the Syrian military planners, a message which does not remain unread by the cadre of Hezbollah nor by the Iranian regime.

The secrecy of these operations, their effectiveness and the overall inability to retaliate against them creates a situation in which Israel’s enemies are left drowsy while their tactical and strategic plans are constantly altered and their assets diminished.

These attacks are also successful in frustrating leaders and organizations which for the last decades have been boasting their anti-Israeli initiatives. While Arab states along with Iran and regional terrorist organizations have stepped up their rhetoric against the Jewish State, their effective ability to surprise Israel in a strategic attack has diminished.

This does not mean that Israeli citizens are no longer under the threat of terrorism and random rocket fire. In fact, the opposite is true.

Since, conventional and semi-conventional techniques are bound to fail, the enemies of Israel are increasingly feeling like they are pushed in the ropes. At these moments, like in a boxing game, the inferior fighter is likely to use low blows or illegal techniques to delay as much as possible the fatidic moment where his situation will be irreversible. In fact, if a coordinated response to these “shock and shush” raids may not happen, Syria and Iran are likely to step up their support for paramilitary and non-state organization.

Surprise raids and single strikes should nevertheless be considered a double edged sword for Israel. As it had been the case in the early days of the Israeli intervention in Lebanon in 2006, the Israeli ability to target enemy infrastructure pushes the latter to increasingly dissimulate its materiel and adopt non-conventional tactics putting at risk the life of civilians. In this sense, Israel may fall victim to its own success. In fact, the ability to target high value objectives does not in itself eliminate the threat posed by terrorist organizations and enemy states. The deterrence created by those strikes should not be overplayed as they do not inflict irreversible damage to the enemy, leaving its will to harm Israel almost intact. In other words they are useful to contain, not defeat, an enemy.

Since Israel’s independence, the Israeli Defense Forces have exploited the element of surprise and the rapidity of small unit /commando style actions act as a force multiplier. As the Egyptians, Syrians and Jordanians learnt in 1967, Assad and Hezbollah are currently experiencing Israel’s ability to strike any target it deems a strategic one. This is the reason why the Hamas leadership remains bunkered under a civilian hospital or why Hezbollah maintains its weapons hidden in villages.

For this situation to be possible, Israel needs to keep and develop two key assets: Its ability to collect and assess vital intelligence regarding its neighbors’ activities and a command and control structure which enables swift, rational and democratic decision making.

In addition to that, the governmental institutions need to outline a clear strategy to control the public discourse. In the era of mass communication, this last point is essential, as if it is badly handled it can deprive Israel of a part of its strategic advantage.

Riccardo Dugulin holds a Master degree from the Paris School of International Affairs (Sciences Po) and is specialized in International Security. He is currently working in Paris for a medical and security assistance company. He has worked for a number of leading think tanks in Washington DC, Dubai and Beirut. Personal website: www.riccardodugulin.com

Hummmm.......

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Ron Ben-Yishai

Will Israel destroy Russian missiles?

Analysis: West assumes Israel will be forced to launch additional attacks on Hezbollah-bound arms convoys

Published: 05.18.13, 13:25 / Israel Opinion

The main reason for the heightened tensions on the northern front is Iran and Syria's interest to intensify and hasten the arming of Hezbollah. Tehran apparently believes the West's patience is running out quickly and that by the end of the first half of 2013, or by the end of the year, Washington or Jerusalem – or both – will decide on a military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities.

The Iranians want to deter Israel and the Western nations from making such a decision by threats of mass casualties and devastation in the Israeli home front. Tehran plans to realize this threat with the use of Hezbollah and Syria's huge missile and rocket arsenal. Particularly important for the Iranians is Hezbollah's arsenal, which is protected from a ground invasion and is deployed in the heart of a supportive population in south Lebanon.

While Syria has a far larger amount of rockets and missiles, it is difficult to gauge how many of them will actually work when Iran will need them most. Therefore, Iran is looking to beef up Hezbollah's arsenal with as many accurate and devastating advanced long-term rockets as possible - rockets such as the Fateh-110, which are capable of reaching the Tel Aviv metropolitan area and even further south.

A significant amount of such rockets would allow Hezbollah to fire a relatively large number of them simultaneously. Assad does not possess any spare rockets or missiles to give Hezbollah so it may threaten Israel's cities. The Assad regime needs its missiles in the fight against Syrian citizens who are assisting the rebels.

However, Hezbollah would very much like to get its hands on Assad's Yakhont anti-ship cruise missiles, which pose a major threat to Israeli Navy vessels and gas fields located up to 300 kilometers (186 miles) from the coast. According to the New York Times, Russia has apparently transferred to Syria recently an improved version of the missile, outfitted with an advanced guidance system that makes them more accurate than the older version.

Assad also has an interest in supplying Hezbollah with advanced, mobile anti-aircraft missile batteries that can protect the Lebanese Shiite group's surface-to-surface missiles and cause heavy casualties to the Israeli Air Force that will try to take them out.

Therefore, Iran and Syria currently have a common goal: Bolster Hezbollah's rocket and missile arsenal while making it more resilient to Israeli airstrikes.

Israel apparently has no intention of allowing Khamenei and Assad to intensify the threat already posed to the Israeli home front, and it does not plan on allowing Hezbollah to diminish the IDF's ability to quickly neutralize this threat if needed.

This "red line," it has been reported, has been implemented by Israel three times as of late – when it bombed a convoy en route to Lebanon and when it attacked missiles stored in Syrian warehouses ahead of their transfer to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Syria, Iran and Hezbollah each had its own reasons not to respond to these attacks in the short term.

The question is – what will happen next time? Assad has apparently not given up on his plan to supply Hezbollah with "deterrence diminishing" weapons as a reward for the Shiite group's assistance in his regime's battle for survival. Assad also wants Hezbollah to safeguard his strategic weapons systems so they will not fall into rebel hands.

This is why the West estimates Israel will apparently be forced to attack - perhaps in the near future - additional arms shipments making their way from Iran to Hezbollah via Syria. It is also estimated that Assad would have to respond, despite the fact that he has almost no effective retaliation options. The Syrian army, in its current state, cannot attack us on the ground, and if it fires missiles toward Israel's home front, Israel will destroy most of the Assad regime's military assets, and other assets, which are crucial for its continued survival.

Therefore, Assad will try to attack Israel indirectly in a way that will not draw a harsh Israeli response. One possibility is a terror attack against an Israeli target abroad. However, the preparations for such an attack, with the cooperation of Iran's Revolutionary Guard and Hezbollah's special unit, may take a long time.

In addition, such an attack would most likely be thwarted by Israeli intelligence. In any case, the effect of such a Syrian response would not be worth the effort. The other, more effective option is to shatter the calm that has prevailed in the Golan Heights for the past 40 years.

The Syrians realize that the calm in the Golan is a sensitive subject in Israeli politics and public opinion. The near hysteric reports in Israel that follow the landing in the area of every stray mortar shell fired by the Syrian army or the rebels, or the reports on the UN's plans to withdraw its forces from the territory - are a testament to this.

Assad, Khamenei and Nasrallah have apparently reached the conclusion that the Golan Heights is the soft spot which can be used to effectively deter Israel from thwarting arms transfers to Hezbollah. Syria, Iran and Hezbollah have issued numerous threats clarifying that the response to additional Israeli strikes will be "strategic…in the Golan." The bottom line: Assad will allow Hezbollah to operate in the Golan, and should Israel attack the transfer of "deterrence diminishing" weapons in Syria or Lebanon, the lives of Israelis in the Golan will be similar to the lives of Israelis residing in communities bordering the Gaza Strip.

Israel will not be able to respond with full force because the terror attack may not be on a large enough scale to justify confining Israel's citizens to shelters for a period of a few weeks or because the identity of those who carry it out will not be clear. This would make it difficult for Israel to garner international support for a forceful military response.

Assad and Hezbollah's threat on the Golan Heights puts the ball back in the Israeli court and makes the dilemma all the more difficult: How will Israel respond the next time a shipment of advanced weapons makes its way from Syria to Lebanon? For now, Jerusalem (which is coordinating its strategy with Washington) is not blinking.

To make Israel's intentions clear, a senior official told the New York Times Israel does not plan on intervening in favor of the rebels, but it will not allow Syria and Iran to transfer "game-changing" weapons to Hezbollah.

The Israeli official stressed that any Syrian retaliation to an Israeli attack will cause Israel to topple Assad's regime. How? By attacking what is left of his army and other assets that allow for the Alawite regime's continued survival. More importantly, Israel will destroy the assets the regime plans to use in order to create an Alawite enclave that will be connected to the Hezbollah-controlled Bekaa Valley in Lebanon.

Such an enclave in the Mediterranean Basin is crucial not only for Assad and his sect, but also for the Iranians and the Russians, who want to preserve their interests in Syria. An Alawite enclave would serve this purpose well, and this is why the Iranians are setting up an international Shiite force that will fight alongside the Alawites in the enclave and outside of it and also help Assad maintain control over Damascus. The Russians, for their part, wish to hold on to facilities in the port of Tartus, which is situated at the center of the future Alawite enclave.

Israel made it clear to Assad and his patrons that any attacks in the Golan will dash their hopes of creating a coastal sanctuary in the Alawite enclave.

The Russians are reading the map well and are aware that in the current situation Assad does not have the means to deter Israel from attacking Hezbollah-bound arms convoys. This is why Putin's aides – in order to deter Israel and the Americans from attacking in Syria - leaked to the press that Moscow will finally transfer to Syria three S-300 missile batteries. The original agreement for the transfer of long-range (200 kilometers, or 124 miles) missiles was signed some three years ago –before the revolt against Assad erupted. Russia has already received some of the payments, but the missiles have not been transferred to Syria due to American and Israeli pressure on the Kremlin not to supply the Assad regime with these missiles, as they may fall into Hezbollah's hands and undermine regional balance - because the Israeli Air Force would be forced to act in Lebanon before these missiles hinder its ability to operate there.

Medvedev, the Russian president at the time, was convinced, and he decided to freeze the agreement in 2010, but he did not cancel it. Nothing has changed since then, but Putin wants to use this arms deal to force Netanyahu to guarantee that Israel will not attack Syria and threaten the regime there. The Russian president apparently wants a similar commitment from Obama. It is safe to assume that Netanyahu did not give such a guarantee to Putin when the two met on the eve of the Shavuot holiday in Sochi. This is why Putin is refusing to promise that he will not transfer the advanced missiles to Syria. This impasse led to the vague statements made by Foreign Minister Lavrov and Putin's spokesman Peskov, from which we can understand that Russia plans to transfer the S-300 missiles to Syria, despite the fact that the two senior officials did not specifically say so. Based on Russia's conduct in recent years, it may very well delay the arms transfer.

The Russians certainly do not want to see their rockets fall into the hands of Islamist Syria rebels or force Israel to attack and destroy the missiles in order to restore its freedom to operate in Lebanese and Syrian airspace.

This issue was discussed during the meeting between Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon and CIA director John Brennan, who made a surprise visit to Israel. The two also discussed Iran.

In the meantime, it is safe to assume that Syria and Hezbollah will not rush to act against Israel in the Golan or along the Lebanese border, mainly because Iran has an interest in keeping Hezbollah and Syria's rocket and missile arsenals ready for action in order to deter Israel and the US from attacking its nuclear facilities. This interest will remain relevant for at least another six months, perhaps even more. Therefore, Iran will advise Assad to act with restraint, for now, even if Israel strikes Hezbollah-bound arms convoys.

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May 20, 2013
Along the Turkey-Syria Border, Erdogan's Own Are Turning Against Him
By Benjamin Barthe

This article first appeared in Le Monde.

REYHANLI - Nearly a week after the two car-bomb attacks rocked this sleepy town, the people of Reyhanli, in southern Turkey, are still burying their dead.

In this Hatay Province town, near the border with Syria, three more bodies have just been found under the rubble, bringing the death toll from the May 11 attack to 51. Little by little, grief and despondency are being replaced by anger.

This exclusively Sunni town is definitely no bastion of resistance to the Justice and Development Party (AKP), the ruling conservative Islamic party. But now, the people of Reyhanli are holding Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan accountable for their situation -- accusing him of dragging their country into civil war by being assertive towards Bashar El-Assad and allowing Syrian rebels to set up bases in Turkey.

The Turkish government's official version of events - which blames local pro-Assad Arab Alawite fundamentalists for the massacre - is hard to swallow. So are the repeated speeches by Erdogan exempting the Syrian refugees and rebels - who have settled in Reyhanli by the thousands - from any responsibility. The people of Reyhanli resent Erdogan for this stance.

"Why hasn't Erdogan come to see us?" asks Hussein angrily, behind the counter of his grocery store. His shop is located a few meters away from the town hall, where the first bomb exploded. "He opens the border to everyone and thinks we are going to stay safe? He lets in all these people wearing galabiyaIslamic robes and beards down to their feet - a reference to the jihadists fighting in Syria - and he thinks we are going to believe that Turkish people bombed us?"

The second bombing occurred next to the post office. Cahit Seyhan is up on a stepladder, fixing the false ceiling of his pharmacy. He also believes that the government tried to save face by blaming the bombings on supporters of the Syrian regime. "It could very well be Jabhat al-Nusra," he argues, accusing one of the most famous jihadist groups leading the fight against Assad.

These reactions are emblematic of how the local population is anxious and worried about being the object of a new intimidation campaign - whoever the attacker may be. Merjimek, an insurance broker, warns: "Erdogan must stop playing with fire. He must force both sides to negotiate and find a compromise. Otherwise, there will be other explosions."

The revolt against Erdogan's stance on Syria is also born out of social frustration. Reyhanli's lower classes do not always approve of these refugees, who are sometimes wealthy, who sometimes start businesses in the city, and whose mass influx has driven real-estate prices to an all-time high. "They are opening more shops than we are, can you imagine?" says Hussein the grocer.

"AKP, USA, killers!"

This despondency can also be felt in the provincial capital of Antakya, known as Antioch in ancient times. Since the bombing, a very heterogeneous crowd made of left-wing militants, social workers, artists and students, has been gathering everyday in front of the bazaar. They have different religious beliefs - Sunni, Alawite and Christian - reflecting the variety in the city's religious and ethnic mosaic. For Ghaleb Redwan, one of the demonstration's organizers, "Hatay - another Turkish name for Antakya - is a very tolerant city, where people do not care about their neighbor's religious belief, and we want to keep it that way. We do not mind welcoming Syrian refugees, as long as it does not threaten our own security."

On Tuesday, fierce slogans could be heard during the demonstration - "AKP, USA, killers!" - revealing the anti-imperialistic views of a great number participants. Some of them are - more or less admittedly -supporters of the Syrian regime, especially the Alawite Arabs, who belong to the same Shia community as the Assad clan.

Some of them are also nostalgic of a time when the Hatay Province was part of Syria - the territory was under French command after the fall of the Ottoman Empire and only became part of Turkey in 1939.

Sheikh Ali Yeral, an Alawite leader in Hatay Province, believes "The Erdogan government's stance on Syria is enslaved to American and Israeli interests in the region. Its goal is to carve up the Arab states into a multitude of small states, to weaken them in front of Israel."

This political uprising has not gone unnoticed by the Turkish opposition. Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the social-democratic People's Republican Party - the AKP's main opponent - travelled to Reyhanli to present his condolences, and then went to Antakya, where he made a more political speech.

Before flying to Washington to meet President Obama, Erdogan declared: "We are the first victims of theSyrian crisis in the region. We cannot just stand by watching what's happening."

If Erdogan does not look inclined to change his policy on Syria, it is because he knows that Hatay Province - because of its unique history and location - is an isolated case. Even if there have been a few demonstrations here and there, the rest of the country has not reacted as fiercely.

Still, the government remains prudent. Authorities have banned TV channels from images of victims of the attack. This censorship does not come as a surprise. Local and presidential elections are scheduled for 2014, and Erdogan has a lot at stake.

Reprinted with permission from Worldcrunch.

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Dagestan bombs kill 4, 2 dead in shootout near Moscow

MAKHACHKALA, Russia | Mon May 20, 2013 3:01pm EDT

(Reuters) - Two car bombs killed at least four people and wounded dozens of others on Monday in one of the bloodiest attacks this year in Dagestan, a turbulent province in Russia's North Caucasus region where armed groups are waging an Islamist insurgency.

Car bombs, suicide bombings and firefights are common in Dagestan, at the center of an insurgency rooted in two post-Soviet wars against separatist rebels in neighboring Chechnya.


Such attacks are rare in other parts of Russia, but in a separate incident in a suburb of Moscow on Monday, security forces killed two suspected militants alleged to have been plotting an attack in the capital and arrested a third suspect after a gunbattle.

One elite police officer was lightly wounded in the exchange of gunfire with the suspects - Russian citizens but trained in Afghanistan or Pakistan - who had holed up in a home in the town of Orekhovo-Zuyevo east of Moscow, authorities said.

Investigators initially said eight people had been killed by the successive blasts in Dagestan's provincial capital Makhachkala, but law enforcement and health officials later put the death toll at four and said about 40 people were wounded.

The explosions occurred with the space of a few minutes near the headquarters of the court bailiffs' service and appeared to have been detonated by remote control, said the federal Investigative Committee, a Russian state agency.

Twisted wreckage of a car could be seen near the building, which was cordoned off by police, and blackened chunks of metal lay in the street.

The Health Ministry said 35 people remained in hospital, including one child, a few hours after the blasts, which the Investigative Committee called a "terrorist act".

The main suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings in the United States, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, lived in Dagestan with his family about a decade ago and visited the region last year.

The visit by Tsarnaev, who was shot dead by U.S. police after the April 15 bombings that killed three people and wounded 264 others, is being scrutinized by U.S. investigators for signs of ties with insurgents.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered law enforcement authorities to ensure insurgents do not attack the 2014 Winter Olympics next February in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi, which is close to the North Caucasus.

All those wounded or killed were apparently caught by the second of Monday's explosions, a few minutes after the first, the investigators said.

Insurgents in the North Caucasus have often sought to increase casualties by setting off an initial blast to attract law enforcement officers and then detonating a second bomb.

Dagestan, an ethnically mixed, mostly Muslim region between Chechnya and the Caspian Sea, has become the most violent province in the North Caucasus, where insurgents say they are fighting to carve out an Islamic state out of southern Russia.

At least 405 people were killed in Dagestan in violence linked to the insurgency last year, according to the Caucasian Knot website, which tracks developments in the region.

Putin launched the second war in Chechnya as prime minister in 1999 and likes to take credit for preventing the region from splitting from Russia. But his 13 years in power have been marred by deadly attacks claimed by or blamed on the insurgents.

(Writing by Steve Gutterman; editing by Timothy Heritage and Jon Hemming)

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Analysis & Opinion

For Russia, Syria is not in the Middle East
Why the underwear-bomber leak infuriated the Obama administration

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http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/20/world/meast/syria-civil-war/?hpt=hp_t2

Syrian rebels target Hezbollah militia, fire rockets into Lebanon
From Yousuf Basil, CNN
May 20, 2013 -- Updated 1831 GMT (0231 HKT)
Watch this video
Violence surges in strategic Syrian city

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

NEW: Obama stresses his concern to the Lebanese president over Hezbollah's "active and growing role"
Across Syria, at least 62 people have died in violence Monday, opposition says
Qusayr is strategically valuable to rebels and government forces
Israeli vehicle reportedly seized; Israel calls claim "cheap propaganda"

Read a version of this story in Arabic.

(CNN) -- The fighting in Syria has taken another dangerous turn, with rebel rockets targeting Hezbollah locations in Lebanon.

Rebels battling for control of Qusayr, a strategically important western town in Syria, fired rockets Sunday across the Lebanese border at the militant group's areas, the rebel Free Syrian Army said.

Hezbollah, the pro-regime and pro-Iranian Shiite militia regarded as a dangerous terror group by the United States and Sunni countries, is fighting alongside President Bashar al-Assad's security forces.

The Free Syrian Army claimed it fired Grad rockets from the city of Qusayr into northeastern Lebanon, targeting Hezbollah areas in Hermel. The opposition Local Coordination Committees of Syria said that direct hits were reported in Hermel and that checkpoints were also targeted.
Al-Assad: I'll consider talks, but ...
Saving Syria's heart

The official Lebanese news agency, NNA, reported the short-range strikes.

The outlet said the strikes caused no damage or casualties. But the rockets underscored fears that bordering nations -- such as Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan -- will be sucked into the conflict, now in its third year.

The White House said President Barack Obama spoke on the phone Monday to Lebanese President Michel Sleiman and "stressed his concern about Hezballah's active and growing role in Syria, fighting on behalf of the Assad regime, which is counter to the Lebanese government's policies."

The civil war in Syria has left around 80,000 people dead and displaced a few million, the United Nations says.

Qusayr, in Homs province near the Lebanese border, is now a major battle front in Syria.

For rebels fighting al-Assad's government, it sits along a transit route for weapons and supplies coming in from Lebanon. For the Syrian government, Qusayr is along a rebel supply line that al-Assad must neutralize to retake control of Homs and foster safer passage between the Mediterranean coast and the capital of Damascus.

Fighting still raged Monday in Qusayr. A rebel spokesman, Tariq Maraey, told CNN that six people were killed in government shelling Monday.

Dozens of people in the city, including Hezbollah members, were killed Sunday, the opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, during fighting for the city.

The regime's Syrian Arab News Agency said soldiers have restored stability to the eastern side of the city "after killing big numbers of terrorists and destroying their hideouts."

The news outlet also quoted an official source saying armed forces seized an Israeli vehicle used by "terrorists," the term the government uses to describe its armed opponents.

An Israeli military spokesman said the vehicle, a jeep, had been out of Israeli service for more than 10 years.

"This is a cheap propaganda attempt and nothing more," the spokesman said of the Syrian government report.

Throughout the country, including Homs province, at least 62 people have died Monday, the LCC said.

READ MORE: Violence surges in strategic Syrian city

READ MORE: U.N.: More than 1.5 million fled Syria, 4 million more displaced within nation

CNN's Joe Sterling, Nic Robertson and Kareem Khadder contributed to this report.

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The Consequences of an Assad Victory
Seth Mandel | @SethAMandel 05.20.2013 - 1:00 PM
Comments 7

Now that we refer to the timeline of the Syrian civil war in years instead of days or months, it can be difficult to perceive singular turning points. But the reports coming today out of Homs Province on the battle over the strategic city of Qusayr seem to be describing just that. As the New York Times notes, the battle, which is pitting the Syrian government’s forces and Hezbollah against Syrian rebels, has resulted thus far in government control over more than half the city for the first time.

The importance of Qusayr can be gleaned from the Washington Post’s essential story from May 11 as well. “All [Assad’s forces] need now,” a Syrian analyst tells reporter Liz Sly, “is to hold the coast, Homs and Damascus, where the institutions of governance are.” The Assad regime has stabilized, and the portrait being painted now is one in which the outcome of the conflict is more likely than not to be a Syria with Bashar al-Assad still in power controlling most of the country except for some jihadist-run enclaves. But it would be a mistake to consider this a return to the status quo. In many ways, the perpetuation of current trends is going to yield a balance of power very different from the pre-war one.

If Assad does indeed retain power, it will bolster Iran’s influence in Syria and Lebanon because of the role played by the Iranian client Hezbollah. It will strengthen Iran’s hand in negotiations with the West, increase Iran’s threat to Israel, and encourage Iranian adventurism and expansionism thanks to President Obama’s penchant for lobbing empty threats. It will be more difficult to isolate Syria not only because of Iran’s increased influence across the region but because Russia will have taken a more public stance in support of the Assad regime. Additionally, if the U.S. plays any role in an armistice that leaves Assad in power the Obama administration will have endorsed Assad’s continued rule.

The other major difference between pre-war Syria and this vision of post-war Syria is the presence of Islamist extremists. Pre-war Syria was a police state with Assad firmly in control. There may have been jihadists there unconnected to the Assad regime, but not nearly to the extent there will be going forward. If the Post’s story is an accurate preview, post-war Syria will have jihadist carve-outs similar to Hezbollah’s center of control in south Lebanon. That will only further destabilize Lebanon and virtually assure some sustained low-level conflict in Syria even after an armistice is signed. (Ironically, it may bear some resemblance to Russia’s fight with Islamist extremists in the Caucasus.)

Strategically for the U.S., there is a difference between a jihadist safe haven in a country whose government cooperates with us to some extent, like Yemen or even Pakistan (the latter having the advantage of at least bordering on a state with U.S. troops–for now), and a jihadist safe haven operating out of a state like Syria. Such jihadists may be beyond the West’s reach, but they won’t be disconnected from Qatari cash. American strategists may think the Qatari link can stand in for our own, but the Qataris have been playing the U.S. and will continue to do so, and will now have a hand in influencing anti-Western extremists in Gaza, Syria, and, as the Wall Street Journal is reporting, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood government.

The Times report closes on this note:

Mr. Assad, according to people who have spoken with him, believes that reasserting his hold in the province is crucial to maintaining control of a string of population centers in western Syria, and eventually to military campaigns to retake rebel-held territory in the north and east. Many analysts say that it is unlikely that the government will be able to regain control of those areas, but that it could consolidate its grip on the west, leading to a de facto division of the country.

Such a division would collapse whatever nominal independence Lebanon has because the Assad regime, buoyed by its military alliance with Hezbollah, would control areas that border on Lebanon. It would give Syria renewed control over Lebanese territory and expand Hezbollah’s reach as well. That might be a fair trade for Assad, but it wouldn’t be for Western interests. If Assad loses territory in Syria’s north or east, those areas may become Islamist operating bases near American allies–Iraq and to some extent Jordan to the east and southeast, Turkey to the north. The latter is a NATO ally with a predilection for funding some Islamic terror groups while fighting others.

Turkey has threatened to invoke NATO’s common defense obligations during the Syrian civil war, but is more likely to join Qatar in funding the jihadists on its border, if only to co-opt them instead of fight them. The danger posed by a permanent, well-funded, battle-scarred jihadist presence near Jordan is quite obvious, though seemingly underappreciated by too many in the West. It may be too late for any resolution that does not leave Assad in power, but we should not delude ourselves into thinking such an outcome would simply turn back the clock to 2011.

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How Iran's Syria Policy Is Making it Lose the Regional Popularity Contest
Iran's unyielding support of Assad is damaging its standing in the Middle East and feeding into a growing regional trust deficit.
By Dina Esfandiary and Islam Al Tayeb
May 20 2013, 1:59 PM ET

These days, there are not many things that Arabs agree on. In fact, it may be fair to say they agree to disagree more often than not when it comes to regional policy. But Iran, once the darling of the Arab Street, is finding both popular and government opinion turning against it. And at the heart of the matter lies official Iranian attitude towards sectarianism and the Syrian uprising.

For years, Iran, and especially Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, enjoyed the unwavering support of the Arab general public, especially following the 2006 war in Lebanon. Many perceived Iran as the outspoken guardian of the Muslim world; a country that had the guts to oppose compromise in the Arab-Israeli peace process and support Hezbollah in its struggle against Israel. But this is no longer the case, and Iran knows it.

So the Iranian regime is trying to regain some positive influence. It's partly why Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi was in Amman, Jordan, recently to meet Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh and King Abdullah II. Jordan's government welcomed the opportunity to discuss Syria with their Iranian counterparts. But the response was different in Parliament: Bassam al-Manaseer, chairman of the Arab and Foreign Relations Committee of the Jordanian Parliament, called the visit "unwelcomed" and expressed his concerns over "suspicious" Iranian activities in the region.

Why would a country like Jordan feel so strongly about Iran? After all, Jordan doesn't share a border with Iran and has only minimal trade ties with the country. In late 2012, when Iran offered to send it oil, Jordan refused. It turned instead to its long-term Gulf donors in a tactical show of unity. What's more, Jordan enjoys close ties with the U.S. and relative stability with the Israelis, so it should not be fearful of a distant troublemaker. But Iran's unyielding support to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is damaging to its standing in the Middle East and feeding into a growing regional trust deficit.

As it drags on, the Syrian civil war is edging closer to Jordan. The kingdom risks being drawn into a conflict it is desperate to avoid. Iran's role in Syria is significant and well-known -- they supply Assad's regime with weapons and advisors, and recently allowed Hezbollah fighters to cross into Syria and fight alongside government forces.

Iran is considered to be contributing towards the dire economic situation in Jordan by prolonging the Syrian conflict. Since the start of the uprising in March 2011, Jordan has received refugees fleeing Syria, despite its strained resources. The sharp increase in demand for housing has doubled prices in some areas, making it difficult for both ordinary Jordanians and Syrian newcomers. It's hard to ignore the growing number of Syrian number plates when driving in Amman ("Look, they're everywhere" said our taxi driver.) The risk of Islamist-extremist infiltration in refugee camps is a rising concern. The effects of the Syrian crisis are being felt by all; government, opposition (including Islamists), activists, and ordinary Jordanians and because of it, they are unequivocal about their dislike of Iran.

Growing sectarian divides between Sunni and Shia Muslims in the region are also blamed on Iran. One Jordanian opposition figure stated that Iran is "trying to make Shia communities more militant" and "inflaming" the Shia-Sunni conflict in order to extend its Islamic revolution. The perception is that Iran is stoking sectarian tensions not out of belief in the Shia cause, but instead, using Shia communities to insert itself into the social and political networks of all states in the region. This has a double effect: increasing resentment among regional political establishments and gradual growth in aversion to anything related to religion.

Jordanians abhorred Iran's suggestion of oil in exchange for the right to visit holy sites in southern Jordan last year. Even Islamists are beginning to question Iran's policies: One Islamic party member complained that Iran is selective in its support of Islamic movements in the region -- "it supports them when it is in the Iranian government's interest".

Jordan is no exception, just a barometer for the region. General Arab resentment and the magnitude of prejudices towards Iran have risen. Signs of wavering support on the Arab streets first emerged in 2009. The Iranian regime's crackdown on pro-democracy protestors during the presidential elections was viewed with surprise. Wasn't this the nation championing people's rights and standing up to the Satans of the world?

Iran's reaction to the Arab Spring nailed the coffin. It high-jacked the wave of uprisings as an " Islamic Awakening" and set double-standards by supporting uprisings in Bahrain and Egypt, while silencing dissent at home. It increasingly meddled in the internal affairs of countries like Iraq. But it was Iran's growing reliance on sectarianism and its involvement in Syria that really tipped the balance. Iran, once perceived as a symbol of resistance to the West in the region, is now seen as a troublesome attention-seeker.

Iran seems to be gaining power but losing friends. The scary thing is that this may not matter. No Middle Eastern country is in a position to militarily threaten Iran. Even a coalition of countries in the region would have a very hard time achieving any objectives against Tehran. The shadow Iran casts on its neighborhood is much wider than its international specter. The region is not afraid of Iran for its weaknesses; they are afraid of its strengths.

Copyright © 2013 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All Rights Reserved.

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U.S. Concerned Over Hizballah Involvement In Syria
May 20, 2013

The White House says President Barack Obama has expressed the United States' concern over Hizballah's involvement in Syria in a telephone call with Lebanese President Michel Sleiman.

The phone call on May 20 took place as Syrian government troops backed by Hizballah fighters continue their assault on a rebel-held town near the Lebanese border.

The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on May 20 that 28 Hizballah fighters were killed in the fighting for the town of Qusayr, now in its third day.

Hizballah, a Lebanese Shi'ite group, is a staunch ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in his fight against mostly Sunni rebels.

Qusayr is seen as strategically important because it lies on a highway that links Damascus to government-controlled cities on the Mediterranean coast.

Based on reporting by AFP and dpa

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Hezbollah fighters killed in battle for Syria's Qusayr

(AFP) – 11 minutes ago

DAMASCUS — A Syrian government assault on the rebel bastion of Qusayr raged into a second day Monday, with at least 28 members of Lebanon's Shiite group Hezbollah reported killed as they fought alongside the army.

US President Barack Obama expressed concern about Hezbollah's role in Syria, in a telephone call with Lebanese President Michel Sleiman, the White House said.

Official Syrian media said the army was consolidating its grip on Qusayr, a strategic prize in the two-year conflict.

The battle for Qusayr began on Sunday, when regime forces backed by Hezbollah stormed the western town, casting a shadow over US-Russian efforts to organise a peace conference on Syria.

By Monday, the fighting was focused on the east of the town, while thousands of civilians were trapped inside, activists said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the fighting had left at least 56 rebels dead, six of them on Monday, and four civilians including a woman.

It also said that "28 members of Hezbollah's elite forces were killed and more than 70 others wounded in clashes in the town of Qusayr yesterday," Sunday.

A source close to Hezbollah told AFP at least 20 members had been killed in Syria fighting alongside President Bashar al-Assad's forces.

A White House statement said Obama "stressed his concern about Hezbollah's active and growing role in Syria, fighting on behalf of the Assad regime, which is counter to the Lebanese government's policies".

Syria's official SANA news agency reported that Syrian troops "are restoring order and security to the eastern part of Qusayr, eliminating terrorists (the regime term for rebels), destroying their dens and defusing bombs near the centre of the town".

An activist on the ground reported intense battles in eastern Qusayr but denied the army had advanced as far as it claimed.

"The army has failed to secure any definitive advance so far. The battles are focused on the east now, where the regime still had a foothold. Now Hezbollah and regime forces are using that foothold to try and break in," Hadi al-Abdallah told AFP via the Internet.

He said at least 25,000 civilians were trapped.

"They have no way of getting out. Trying to get out of Qusayr is a suicide operation," said Abdallah.

He called the latest assault one of the fiercest since the uprising against the Assad's regime erupted in March 2011.

Qusayr is strategic because it sits between Damascus and the coast and is near the Lebanese border.

Violence has frequently spilled over from Syria into Lebanon, where the population is divided over the conflict.

On Monday, a Lebanese soldier was killed in the northern city of Tripoli, as the army tried to quell sectarian clashes between Sunnis who support the Syrian revolt and Alawites who back Assad.

In Doha, Qatar's emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, lashed out against the international community.

"It is no longer acceptable that influential states in the international community do not act to end the horrific tragedy and escalating humanitarian catastrophe," Sheikh Hamad said.

He lamented the "failure of all international and Arab initiatives to get the Syrian regime to listen to the sound of reason".

Syria's umbrella opposition National Coalition, warning that "a civilian massacre will soon take place", urged the Arab League to convene an emergency meeting of Arab foreign ministers and take measures "to protect Qusayr".

The French foreign ministry urged "all the players in a position to avoid a new massacre of the Syrian civilian population to mobilise without delay".

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said London remains committed to amending the EU arms embargo on Syria, but stressed it had taken no decisions to arm the rebels.

Foreign ministers of the so-called Friends of Syria group of nations are due to meet on Wednesday in Jordan, ahead of a planned Syria peace conference which Washington and Russia are hoping to organise.

On the humanitarian front, aid organisation Oxfam warned that as the hot Middle East summer approaches health risks could increase for hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees in Jordan and Lebanon.

The UN says that more than 1.5 million Syrians have fled the conflict and estimates that more than 70,000 people have been killed since March 2011.

The Observatory has a higher toll of around 94,000 killed.

Copyright © 2013 AFP. All rights reserved.

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N Korea fires six missiles in three days
Updated: 05:10, Tuesday May 21, 2013

North Korea has fired a sixth missile into the Sea of Japan on Monday despite a flurry of international protests.

The latest firing was confirmed by the South's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), who said it was unclear if the North was testing guided missiles or rockets from multiple launchers.

'North Korea launched two projectiles on Monday - one in the morning and the other in the afternoon,' a JCS spokesman told AFP.

Such drills are not unusual but they come as the Korean peninsula is only just emerging from a period of particularly elevated military tensions triggered by the North's nuclear test in February.

In a statement on Monday, Pyongyang angrily rejected criticism that the missile exercises were a deliberate attempt to kick off a fresh cycle of tensions.

'Military training ... is the indisputable right of any sovereign nation,' the North's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea said.

'Viciously taking issue with our military's rocket firing training ... is an unacceptable challenge and a wanton provocation,' it said.

North Korea fired three short-range guided missiles off its east coast on Saturday and another on Sunday.

South Korea had labelled the weekend tests 'deplorable', while UN chief Ban Ki-moon urged Pyongyang to exercise restraint.

'It is time for them to resume dialogue and lower the tensions,' Ban said in Moscow on Sunday.

North Korea argues that the real provocation is coming from South Korea and the United States, which have carried out a series of small and large-scale joint military drills in recent months.

The joint exercises have included the use of nuclear-capable B2 stealth bombers and, most recently, the participation of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Nimitz.

On Monday South Korea's President Park Geun-Hye's top security adviser, Kim Jang-Soo, again urged Pyongyang to desist from any more drills.

'Whether it's just a test or a show of force, the North should not get involved in actions that create tension,' Kim said.

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Defiance on the Peninsula

21 May 2013

Ban Ki-Moon seems to be on a fence-mending exercise in the Korean Peninsula. He has called upon the Stalinist state to refrain from further missile tests and opt for a dialogue with the stakeholders in the region.

In his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the UN secretary-general tried to prevail over Moscow to use its clout and good offices to persuade North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to return from the brink, and desist from plunging the entire Peninsula — and the world at large — in an another undesired war. But to what extent such soft diplomatic vibes can create ripples in Pyongyang’s politico-military establishment is not difficult to guess. Kim is unlikely to even heed to such calls, as his prime intention remains to attract international audience and compel the Western powers, especially the United States, to deal with it at par with its archrival across the line of Armistice.

The UN chief’s statement was too muted to make an impact, though. His utterances in capitals such as Seoul, Beijing, Moscow and Tokyo are of little relevance for North Korea. The same could have a robust impact if made in Pyongyang, and that too by exposing Kim to the international media. That is exactly what the young leadership in the communist state wants. North Korea, which fired a fifth short-range missile into the Sea of Japan on Monday — defying warnings from the world body and South Korea — after a flurry of similar tests over the weekend, is too berserk to be dealt with media supplications. It’s time for the UN and Washington to read between the lines and engage Kim in a manner that he expects from these avenues. There’s defiance is in the air and this could be easily deciphered in the statement of the North’s Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea. It said that ‘military training is the indisputable right of any sovereign nation’. In other words if something goes astray and leads to breakout of hostilities, Pyongyang would keep on portraying it part of nationalism — unmindful of deadly consequences for the region and the world.

What is mandatory is the fact that somehow North Korea has to be convinced to resume the stalled dialogue process. Russia, China and the United States can make a good collective beginning by brokering a dialogue and assuring it of a quid pro quo on the world stage.

Ban Ki-moon has to further push the envelope by choreographing a detailed peace roadmap for Pyongyang, and persuading Kim to do the needful. Ban, who comes from the same region and is well-versed with the intrigues that Pyongyang plays, has to exhibit extraordinary leadership to realise peace and reunification on the Peninsula.

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CHINA NEWS
May 20, 2013, 7:31 a.m. ET

China Urges North Korea to Free Fishermen

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By BRIAN SPEGELE And JOSH CHIN

BEIJING—China's government responded cautiously on Monday to concern over the safety of Chinese fishermen seized along with their vessel by North Koreans this month, in the latest test of ties between the traditional allies.

Details of the incident remain sketchy. The owner of the boat, Yu Xuejun, said the fishermen were captured on May 6 while operating in Chinese territorial waters off China's northeast coast. Mr. Yu, in an interview, said Chinese authorities didn't respond to his request for help for more than week after he reported the incident to border and maritime police.

The case only gained attention over the weekend after Mr. Yu published details of the incident on a popular social-networking site.

It isn't clear who exactly in North Korea is holding the fishermen. Mr. Yu said the captors had demanded ransom of 600,000 yuan ($97,700) be paid by Monday evening. In a series of posts since Saturday to his account on Tencent Holding Ltd.'s Weibo microblogging service, Mr. Yu pressed Chinese authorities to better protect Chinese fishermen.

"We just hope the country is able to protect our rights and interests, and lessen the instances of Chinese boats being detained by North Korea in China's territorial waters," Mr. Yu wrote.

Impoverished North Korea is widely accused of engaging in a range of illicit activities to raise hard cash, including drug smuggling, currency counterfeiting and arms trafficking.

At a daily press briefing on Monday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said China is in close communication with Pyongyang, without offering details.

China "has called on North Korea to handle this matter in a speedy fashion and make all efforts to guarantee the legal rights of Chinese fishermen as well as their property and personal safety," Mr. Hong said. A man who answered the phone at North Korea's embassy in Beijing declined to comment.

In May 2012, 29 people on three ships were detained by North Koreans, who demanded 300,000 yuan for each of the boat's release. It also wasn't clear in those cases who was responsible for the seizures.

The boats were eventually released nearly two weeks after they were captured. It isn't clear whether China's government agreed to pay ransom. Those cases received wide coverage in China's media and sparked online criticism of what many viewed as a tepid response from the Chinese government.

In a reflection of growing public frustration inside China with the country's problematic ally, Chinese social media users reacted angrily to news of the seizure.

"Fatty Kim the Third eats Chinese grain, uses Chinese tools and now comes over to detain Chinese people," wrote one user of Sina Corp.'s popular Weibo microblogging service, using a nickname for North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that has grown common on the Chinese Internet.

Internet users also directed their fury at Beijing for appearing reluctant to respond to the detention of the fishing crew, with some suggesting the seizures might be part of a conspiracy to funnel money to Pyongyang.

Some of the sharpest comments came from retired general Luo Yuan, a hard-line nationalist who was once a staunch defender of North Korea. "Today I saw reports saying the Chinese embassy in North Korea has confirmed this really happened—it made me furious!" he wrote.

"North Korea has gone too far. Just because you're poor, that doesn't mean you can cross borders and detain people for ransom. The North Korean side must, in accordance with the Chinese government's request, immediately release the boat and guarantee the lives, property, safety and legal rights of its crew. Otherwise, evil acts will be repaid!"

The latest incident comes as tensions remain high on the Korean peninsula. North Korea has launched six missiles over the last three days, including two short-range missiles from its eastern coast into the sea on Monday, according to South Korea's defense ministry. Mr. Hong, China's foreign ministry spokesman, reiterated China's long-standing calls for tensions to be solved through negotiations.

It remained unclear Monday night whether Beijing had made any progress in negotiating the release of the boat or its crew.
—William Kazer and Kersten Zhang contributed to this article.

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May 20, 2013
Karzai Seeks Indian Military Aid Amid Pakistan Row
By Kay Johnson

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai will seek increased military aid from India during a three-day visit starting Monday and will discuss recent cross-border clashes with Pakistan, India's archrival, an aide said.

The comments follow a weekend report by the Times of India that said Afghanistan's ambassador to India had said the country needs India's help with "equipment and weapons to fight." The Press Trust of India later quoted a spokesman for New Delhi's Foreign Ministry as saying the country is ready to meet any such request.

"Yes, we will ask for assistance for the strengthening of our security forces," Karzai spokesman Aimal Faizi said in a briefing ahead of the trip. He did not comment on the Indian reports.

Karzai's visit could irk Pakistan, especially if any arms deal materializes. Pakistan considers Afghanistan its own backyard and suspects rival India of seeking greater influence there as a strategy to hem in the country from both sides. Pakistan and India have fought three wars since they were divided into two countries when they gained independence from Britain in 1947.

Afghanistan and India signed a strategic partnership agreement in 2011 that has included Indian military training of Afghan security forces. Faizi indicated in Saturday's briefing that Karzai would seek to expand that cooperation. "Whatever our Afghan security forces would need for assistance and help, India would help us," he said.

Afghan analyst Wadir Safi, a political science professor at Kabul University, says the timing of Karzai's India trip is likely related to recent border skirmishes with Pakistan.

Each side has been accusing the other of firing across the mountainous border region for months, including a skirmish earlier this month that killed an Afghan border policeman. Both countries have also accused each other of providing shelter for insurgents fighting on the other side of the border.

Afghan accusations that Pakistan is allegedly trying to torpedo efforts to start peace talks with the Taliban have also contributed to deteriorating relations. Pakistan is considered crucial to nudging Taliban leaders, many of which are in hiding in Pakistan, to the table - a key goal of the United States and its allies ahead of the final pullout of foreign combat forces by the end of next year.

Karzai has long been deeply suspicious of the motives of Pakistan's government and military, which backed the Taliban regime before it was toppled in the 2001 U.S.-led intervention and has since seemed unable or unwilling to go after militant leaders taking refuge inside its borders. The killing of al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden in Pakistan only strengthened Afghan wariness of his neighbor.

Any increased military cooperation with India would likely only contribute to tensions, Safi warned. Afghanistan had been a proxy battleground for Pakistan and India during the war between the Pakistani-backed Taliban regime and the India-supported Northern Alliance.

Another Afghan analyst, Hamidullah Farooqi, said he thinks the reports of India supplying weapons are simply brinkmanship and, at most, India might agree to help Afghanistan upgrade old Soviet-era weaponry.

"An arms deal with India would not be helpful for regional stability or for the balance that Afghanistan needs between India and Pakistan," Farooqi said. "This is just a political game. I don't think there will be an arms deal."

Aside from regional strategic rivalries, Karzai is expected to discuss economic issues and will visit an engineering university where he will receive an honorary degree, Faizi said.

India has invested more than $2 billion in Afghan infrastructure, including highways and hospitals and rural electricity projects. New Delhi is hoping to gain some influence in the country after 2014, when Afghan forces become responsible for the entire country's security.

Karzai, who earned his college degree in India, has visited New Delhi more than a half dozen times in the past few years, most recently in November 2012.

© 2013 THE ASSOCIATED PRESS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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SOUTH CHINA SEA: Indian Defence Minister Makes Strong Assertions

Paper No. 5496
Dated 20-May-2013

By Dr. Subhash Kapila

Introductory Observations

The South China Sea region has been converted into a militarily turbulent one due to the illegal claims by China declaring sovereignty over the entire South China Sea.

China in the process has not only resorted to escalated military brinkmanship but also resorted to use of armed force and coercion against its less powerful South East Asian neighbours, namely, Vietnam and the Philippines.

Asian security as a whole today stands endangered by China’s military adventurism not only in the South China Sea against Vietnam and the Philippines, but extending to the Himalayan Borders of India with China- Occupied Tibet. Chinese military adventurism to reinforce its sovereignty over disputed borders is by now a well-established pattern.

India has a legitimate strategic interest in the South China Sea region encompassing political, economic and strategic factors. At the ASEAN-India Summit in New Delhi in December 2012, India had declared its position on the South China Sea disputes in consonance with the global sentiments.

Reiteration of India’s stand on the South China Sea conflicts should be a pointer that India stands firmly against any Chinese actions that violate international laws and UN Conventions. The recent assertions by the Indian Defence Minister, A K Antony were a welcome reiteration and reassurance and should go down well in South East Asian countries that look upon India as the regional balancer against China’s hegemonistic inclinations against its Southern neighbours.

Indian Defence Minister’s Assertions on South China Sea Security

Voicing concerns over China’s actions in the South China Sea region, the Indian Defence Minister addressing media persons on May 11, 2013 made the following assertions:

“There should be freedom of navigation as per the UN conventions.”
“India has commercial interests and though it is not a party to the dispute, it believes that disputes should be settled as per UN laws.”
“The protection of Sea-Lanes of Communication is becoming more and more important. Economic development, trade and commerce depend on the security of Sea Lanes of Communication”

Indian Defence Minister’s Assertions Analysed

Taken at face value, the assertions made by the Indian Defence Minister’s may not count much and may not be counted as strong assertions. But coming from the Indian Defence Minister who is noted for his reticence and measured words, there are a lot of implicit messages for China on its aggressive postures on the South China Sea issues. Political signalling can therefore be read in these assertions.

Emphasis on UN Conventions and dispute/conflict resolution as per UN Laws (read UNCLOS) by the Indian Defence Minister clashes diametrically with China’s rigidly stated positions that the South China Sea disputes will be resolved by China only through “bilateral negotiations” with the other disputants. This simply because in a bi-lateral process China can bring to bear its awesome military coercion in play against small countries like Vietnam and the Philippines.

India’s opposition to China’s declaratory stands is therefore noteworthy. It is more noteworthy in the sense that such assertions by US dignitaries earlier drew strong protests from China as interference in its internal affairs. The United States ignored these protests. It is time that India too discards its deference to Chinese sensitivities.

Further, the assertion on freedom of navigation is in keeping with international pronouncements of commitments to “defence of global commons” Implicit in such international stands is the message for China that the South China Sea is a global heritage which cannot be consigned to the ‘full sovereignty over the whole South China Sea’ as declared by China. The Chinese stand apparently is being challenged by India in an implied manner along with the rest of the Asian community.

Protection of Sea Lanes of Communication that pass through the South China Sea can be read as India fears genuinely, as the rest of the world does, that China could threaten these vital maritime lifelines and that the global community has to take initiatives to forestall that threat. Can one read in this assertion by the Indian Defence Minister that India would be inclined to join any international effort to ensure that the South China Sea maritime arteries remain open without any restrictions or impediments by China?

More significantly, what needs to be considered is the contextual backdrop where the Indian Defence Minister was making the above assertions on the South China Sea.

These assertions by the Indian Defence Minister were not made at any Seminar or discussion event on the South China Sea conflict but these Indian concerns were expressed to media-persons after commissioning the first ship-deck based super-sonic jet fighter, the MIG 29K Squadron at Goa comprising 18 jet fighters for the Indian Navy. A total of 45 MIG 29K supersonic jet fighters have been purchased from Russia at a cost of over $ 2 Billion.

Contextually, these assertions by the Indian Defence Minister were made on the eve of the Chinese Prime Minister’s visit to India. Also they coincide with recent media reports of India upgrading its maritime surveillance and operational capabilities and infrastructure in South India for extended coverage of the Indian Ocean sea-lanes and threats.

The Indian Defence Minister also informed the media that India’s first indigenously built Aircraft Carrier would be launched on August 12 this year and the INS VIKRAMADITYA would arrive from Russia before the end of 2013.

In a context other than the South China Sea, but at the same event and with China still in mind, it was reassuring to hear the Indian Defence Minister declare that “As China has the right to improve, increase and strengthen and other facilities on its land; India has the right to develop its own infrastructure.”

India’s Commercial Interest in the South China Sea.

While on the subject of India’s legitimate strategic interests in the South China Sea, it needs to be remembered that India’s energy security quest led it also to set up a joint exploration project with Vietnam in two oil exploration blocks numbered 127&128 in Phu Khanh Basin.

Some quarters have wrongly reported that India’s oil-exploration projects are in disputed waters. That is the Chinese version. It needs to be clarified that these Indian oil exploration projects which China protested against are located in South China Sea waters in Vietnam’s jurisdiction and not Chinese jurisdiction. Hence China’s protests are not tenable when the provisions of the UN Convention on the Law of the Seas are kept in mind.

China neither has de-facto nor de-jure jurisdiction over the entire South China Sea. By unilateral and illegal declarations of its Nine Dashed Line, China cannot order all international oil-prospecting projects in the South China Sea region to stop their operations.

Concluding Observations

India may not be a party to the dispute in the South China Sea as regards the sovereignty of the disputed islands is concerned, but India should consider itself as a legitimate stake-holder in the security and stability of the South China Sea.

In the above context therefore, India as a major maritime power in the Indo-Pacific Region must consider that no major power including China is allowed to resort to aggressive military brinkmanship to redraw maps to establish China’s full sovereignty over the entire South China Sea. Tomorrow China would start claiming some portions of the Indian Ocean on historical grounds that some Chinese Admiral’s fleet traversed those areas centuries ago.

India to begin with may not be able to perform this task single-handedly. In tandem with its preparations for building up its maritime power, India must politically be more vocal in embedding in international consciousness that Asian stability and security stands endangered if China is allowed a free run in riding rough-shod over the sovereignty and legal claims of its smaller neighbours like Vietnam and the Philippines in the South China Sea.

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Egypt army prepares for Sinai assault
Published today (updated) 20/05/2013 17:59

EL-ARISH, Egypt (Ma’an) -- Egyptian security forces were preparing Monday to launch a rescue operation to free seven kidnapped soldiers and police officers in the Sinai peninsula, security sources said.

A large plane carrying soldiers and heavy military equipment landed at el-Arish airport Sunday night in preparation for the attack on "terrorist groups," the sources said on the condition of anonymity.

Egypt's military has also called in a special forces unit as Cairo refuses to negotiate with the kidnappers.

A video posted on YouTube on Sunday appeared to show the seven hostages, blindfolded and with their hands on their heads, identifying themselves.

One of them is prodded by what appears to be a rifle held by an abductor off screen before another hostage says the kidnappers want the release of detained Bedouin "political activists".

He mentioned by name a Bedouin militant sentenced to death after a 2011 attack on a police station in the north Sinai town of El-Arish.

"We hope that you, president, quickly release the political activists from Sinai as soon as possible because we can no longer stand the torture," said one hostage.

The video, posted online by an anonymous account, was later removed from YouTube, which posted a message saying it violated its "policy on violence".

Neither the presidency nor the military responded to requests for comment.

One of the hostages in the footage bears a strong resemblance to a hostage in a picture held by relatives who joined the police protest at the Rafah border crossing.

The policemen, who worked at border crossings, and soldiers were kidnapped at gunpoint while travelling to their homes on leave.

Taher al-Nunu, a spokesman for the Hamas government in Gaza, said authorities there were concerned about Egypt's closure of the Rafah crossing in response to the kidnappings. But he said he understood Egypt's security needs and opposed the kidnapping "crime."

"The government is making every effort to provide Palestinians with their needs while traveling, and there has been no political decision to close the border.

"There have been intensive procedures to resolve the issue," he said.

Attacks on police and soldiers in the sparsely populated peninsula have surged since an uprising that overthrew president Hosni Mubarak in 2011, as have cross-border attacks on Israel.

The north of the peninsula is underdeveloped and has become a haven for Islamist militants, unlike the south which is dotted with beach resorts.

AFP contributed to this report.

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Middle East
Dumb and Dumber

How neocons and Obama liberals have created catastrophe by consensus in the Middle East
By David P. Goldman|May 20, 2013 12:00 AM|19comments

Errors by the party in power can get America into trouble; real catastrophes require consensus.

Rarely have both parties been as unanimous about a development overseas as they have in their shared enthusiasm for the so-called Arab Spring during the first months of 2011. Republicans vied with the Obama Administration in their zeal for the ouster of Egypt’s dictator Hosni Mubarak and in championing the subsequent NATO intervention against Muammar Qaddafi in Libya. Both parties saw themselves as having been vindicated by events. The Obama Administration saw its actions as proof that soft power in pursuit of humanitarian goals offered a new paradigm for foreign-policy success. And the Republican establishment saw a vindication of the Bush freedom agenda.

“Revolutions are sweeping the Middle East and everyone is a convert to George W. Bush’s freedom agenda,” Charles Krauthammer observed in February 2011. “Now that revolution has spread from Tunisia to Oman,” Krauthammer added, “the [Obama] administration is rushing to keep up with the new dispensation, repeating the fundamental tenet of the Bush Doctrine that Arabs are no exception to the universal thirst for dignity and freedom.” And William Kristol exulted, “Helping the Arab Spring through to fruition might contribute to an American Spring, one of renewed pride in our country and confidence in the cause of liberty.”

They were all wrong. Just two years later, the foreign-policy establishment has fractured in the face of a Syrian civil war that threatens to metastasize into neighboring Iraq and Lebanon and an economic collapse in Egypt that has brought the largest Arab country to the brink of state failure. Some Republican leaders, including Sen. John McCain and Weekly Standard editor Kristol, demand American military intervention to support Syria’s Sunni rebels. But Daniel Pipes, the dean of conservative Middle East analysts, wrote on April 11 that “Western governments should support the malign dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad,” because “Western powers should guide enemies to stalemate by helping whichever side is losing, so as to prolong their conflict.” If Assad appears to be winning, he added later, we should support the rebels. The respected strategist Edward Luttwak contends that America should “leave bad enough alone” in Syria and turn its attention away from the Middle East—to Asia. The Obama Administration meanwhile is waffling about what might constitute a “red line” for intervention and what form such intervention might take.

The once-happy bipartisan consensus has now shrunk to the common observation that all the available choices are bad. It could get much worse. Western efforts have failed to foster a unified leadership among the Syrian rebels, and jihadi extremists appear to be in control of the Free Syrian Army inside Syria. Syria’s war is “creating the conditions for a renewed conflict, dangerous and complex, to explode in Iraq. If Iraq is not shielded rapidly and properly, it will definitely slip into the Syrian quagmire,” warns Arab League Ambassador Nassif Hitti. Iraq leaders are talking of civil war and eventual partition. Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, meanwhile, warned on May 1, “Syria has real friends in the region, and the world will not let Syria fall into the hands of America, Israel or takfiri [radical islamist] groups,” threatening in effect to turn the civil war into a regional conflict that has the potential to destabilize Turkey. And the gravest risk to the region remains the likelihood that “inherent weaknesses of state and society in Egypt reach a point where the country’s political, social and economic systems no longer function,” as Gamal Abuel Hassan wrote on May 28. Libya is fracturing, and the terrorists responsible for the September 2012 Benghazi attack are operating freely.

This is a tragic outcome, in the strict sense of the term, for it is hard to imagine how it could have turned out otherwise.

* * *

In January 2012, after the first hopes for Arab democracy had faded, former Bush Administration official Elliot Abrams insisted:

The neocons, democrats, and others who applauded the Arab uprisings were right, for what was the alternative? To applaud continued oppression? To instruct the rulers on better tactics, the way Iran is presumably lecturing (and arming) Syria’s Bashar al-Assad? Such a stance would have made a mockery of American ideals, would have failed to keep these hated regimes in place for very long, and would have left behind a deep, almost ineradicable anti-Americanism.

The neoconservatives mistook a tubercular fever for the flush of youth in the Arab revolts, to be sure, but they read the national mood right—as did the Obama Administration.

There were dissenters, of course. Daniel Pipes warned against pushing Islamists toward elections, writing in 2005:

When politically adept totalitarians win power democratically, they do fix potholes and improve schools—but only as a means to transform their countries in accordance with their utopian visions. This generalization applies most clearly to the historical cases (Adolf Hitler in Germany after 1933, Salvador Allende in Chile after 1970) but it also appears valid for the current ones.

Henry Kissinger excoriated the Obama Administration for toppling Mubarak, arguing that no other force in Egypt could stabilize the country. Francis Fukuyama broke with his erstwhile neoconservative colleagues in 2004, after hearing Vice President Dick Cheney and columnist Charles Krauthammer announce the beginning of an American-led “unipolar era.” “All of these people around me were cheering wildly,” Fukuyama remembers. “All of my friends had taken leave of reality.”

It is a widespread misimpression (reinforced by conspiracy theorists seeking the malign influence of the “Israel Lobby”) that the neoconservative movement is in some way a Jewish thing. On the contrary, it is a distinctly American thing. As the born-again Methodist George W. Bush said in 2003, “Peoples of the Middle East share a high civilization, a religion of personal responsibility, and a need for freedom as deep as our own. It is not realism to suppose that one-fifth of humanity is unsuited to liberty; it is pessimism and condescension, and we should have none of it.” The Catholic neoconservative and natural-law theorist Michael Novak put it just as passionately in his 2004 book The Universal Hunger for Liberty: “The hunger for liberty has only slowly been felt among Muslims. That hunger is universal, even when it is latent, for the preconditions for it slumber in every human breast.”

By contrast, Israelis were overwhelmingly pessimistic about the outcome of the Arab revolts and aghast at the celerity with which Washington dumped Mubarak. “The message to the Middle East is that it doesn’t pay to be an American ally,” a former Israeli intelligence chief told me in 2012. Although the prominent Soviet refusenik-turned-Israeli-politician Natan Sharansky believed in a universal desire for democracy, the vast majority of Israeli opinion thought the idea mad. As Joshua Muravchik wrote in 2011, the Arab Spring:

precipitated a sharp split between neoconservatives and hard-headed Israeli analysts who had long been their allies and friends. While neocons saw democratization as a balm to soothe the fevered brow of the Arab world, Israeli strategists (with the notable exception of Natan Sharansky) thought this utterly naive. Their message in essence was this: you do not know the Arabs as we do. Difficult as their governments are to deal with, they are more reasonable than their populations. Democratization of the Arab world would lead to radicalization, which would be a bane to you and us.

The Israelis are accustomed to living with long-term uncertainty; Americans want movies with happy endings. The alternative to the Bush Freedom Agenda or Obama’s proposed reconciliation with the Muslim world would have been ugly: the strategic equivalent of a controlled burn in a forest fire, as Daniel Pipes proposed—prolonging conflict, at frightful human cost, as the Reagan Administration did during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s. It was one thing to entice prospective enemies into a war of attrition in the dark corners of the Cold War, though, and quite another to do so under the klieg lights. The strategy might have been correct on paper, but Americans are not typically in the market for pessimism.

The American public fell in love with the young democracy activists who floated across the surface of the Arab revolts like benzene bubbles on the Nile. More precisely, Americans fell in love with their own image, in the persons of hip young Egyptians who reminded them of Americans. Conservatives and liberals alike competed to lionize Google sales manager Wael Ghonim. Caroline Kennedy gave him the JFK Profiles in Courage Award in May 2011. He made Time magazine’s list of the world’s 100 most influential people. The conservative Lebanese scholar Fouad Ajami kvelled in the Wall Street Journal:

No turbaned ayatollah had stepped forth to summon the crowd. This was not Iran in 1979. A young Google executive, Wael Ghonim, had energized this protest when it might have lost heart, when it could have succumbed to the belief that this regime and its leader were a big, immovable object. Mr. Ghonim was a man of the modern world. He was not driven by piety. The condition of his country—the abject poverty, the crony economy of plunder and corruption, the cruelties and slights handed out to Egyptians in all walks of life by a police state that the people had outgrown and despaired of—had given this young man and others like him their historical warrant.

Republican hawks advocated the furtherance of the Arab Spring by force of arms, starting with Libya. On Feb. 25, 2011, a month after Mubarak’s fall, Kristol’s Foreign Policy Initiative garnered 45 signatures of past officials and public intellectuals “urging President Obama, in conjunction with NATO allies, to take action to end the violence being propagated by the regime of Muammar al-Qaddafi.” Three weeks later a NATO force led by the United States intervened. By September, the Qaddafi regime was beaten, and Robert Kagan lauded President Obama in the Weekly Standard: “By intervening, with force, the NATO alliance not only saved the people of Libya and kept alive the momentum of the Arab Spring … the end of Qaddafi’s rule is a great accomplishment for the Obama administration and for the president personally. Furthermore, the president deserves credit because his decision was unpopular and politically risky.” A month later the victorious rebels put the cadavers of Qaddafi and his son on public view.

The national consensus behind the Arab Spring peaked with the Libyan venture. Elliot Abrams was in a sense right: To intimate that democracy might not apply to Arabs seems to violate America’s first principle, that people of all background have the same opportunity for success—in the United States. It seems un-American to think differently. Isn’t America a multi-ethnic melting pot where all religions and ethnicities have learned to get along? That is a fallacy of composition, to be sure: Americans are brands plucked out of the fire of failed cultures, the few who fled the tragic failings of their own culture to make a fresh start. The only tragic thing about America is the incapacity of Americans to comprehend the tragedy of other peoples. To pronounce judgment on other cultures as unfit for modernity, as Abrams wrote, seems “a mockery of American ideals.”

The neoconservatives triumphantly tracked the progress of what they imagined was Arab democracy. After Iraq’s March 2005 elections, Max Boot wrote:

In 2003, more than a month before the invasion of Iraq, I wrote in the Weekly Standard that the forthcoming fall of Baghdad “may turn out to be one of those hinge moments in history—events like the storming of the Bastille or the fall of the Berlin Wall—after which everything is different. If the occupation goes well (admittedly a big if), it may mark the moment when the powerful antibiotic known as democracy was introduced into the diseased environment of the Middle East, and began to transform the region for the better.” Well, who’s the simpleton now? Those who dreamed of spreading democracy to the Arabs or those who denied that it could ever happen?

Similarly, in April 2011, Kristol wrote:

The Arab winter is over. The men and women of the Greater Middle East are no longer satisfied by “a little life.” Now it’s of course possible that this will turn out to be a false spring. But surely it’s not beyond the capacity of the United States and its allies to help reformers in the Arab world achieve mostly successful outcomes. … And who knows? Helping the Arab Spring through to fruition might contribute to an American Spring, one of renewed pride in our country and confidence in the cause of liberty.

Writing in the Weekly Standard in September of that year, Robert Kagan was so confident of the march of democracy that he proposed to throw the Jordanian monarchy under the bus after Mubarak, despite Jordan’s longstanding alliance with the United States.

Even when Islamists trampled the democrats in the aftermath of Mubarak’s fall, the foreign-policy consensus held strong. The Obama Administration courted Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, while Republican sages argued that Islamist rule, while suboptimal, nonetheless represented progress on the road to democracy. Joshua Muravchik pooh-poohed the risks of the Muslim Brotherhood role in a September 2011 essay: “t seems unlikely that the Egyptians, aroused as they are and having lived through the Nasser experience, would succumb to a new despotism. The most likely force to impose it, the Muslim Brotherhood, has been having trouble keeping its own members in line, much less the rest of the country.” Muravchik wrote:

Perhaps the most important of the region’s hopeful signs is the rebellion in Syria. Who would have thought that Syrians, of all peoples, would have earned the world’s admiration? Yet it is hard to think of many cases in which nonviolent protestors have exposed themselves to shoot-to-kill security forces for months on end without being cowed into surrender. If these brave people persevere and drive the Assad dynasty from power, that itself would go far toward making the Arab Spring a net benefit for the region and the world.

But the democracy enthusiasts missed a crucial feature of the Arab Spring: The toppling of Hosni Mubarak and the uprising against Syria’s Basher Assad occurred after the non-oil-producing Arab countries had lurched into a dangerous economic decline. Egypt, dependent on imports for half its caloric consumption, faced a sharp rise in food prices while the prices of cotton and other exports languished. Asia’s insatiable demand for feed grains had priced the Arab poor out of the market: Chinese pigs were fed before Egyptian peasants, whose labor was practically worthless. Almost half of Egyptians are functionally illiterate, and its university graduates are unqualified for the global market (unlike Tunisians, who staff the help desks of French software firms). Out of cash, Egypt faces chronic food and fuel shortages and presently is on life support through emergency loans from its neighbors. The insoluble economic crisis makes any form of political stabilization unlikely.

Egypt’s Exports, Imports and Trade Balance

(Source: Central Bank of Egypt)

Syria’s economic position is, if possible, even worse. Yemen is not only out of money, but nearly out of water. Large portions of the Arab world have languished so long in backwardness that they are beyond repair. After the dust of the popular revolts dissipated, we are left with banana republics, but without the bananas.

It is a salutary exercise to consider the views we hold with impassioned conviction and ask: “What would it imply if we are wrong?” Neoconservatives of all stripes believed with perfect faith that the desire for liberty is a universal human impulse, requiring only the right institutions to reinforce it. The Obama Administration believed that all cultures have equal validity and that—as Obama said early in his presidency—that he thinks of American exceptionalism the same way that the Greeks think about Greek exceptionalism. In both cases, Republicans and Democrats believe that there is nothing inherently unique about America—except that this country was the first to create the political framework that corresponds to the true nature of every human being.

Kristol’s 2011 assessment of the Arab Spring was erroneous, but he was right to link America’s state of being to events in the Middle East. We stumbled by national consensus into a strategic morass, from which there is no apparent exit, in the naïve belief that under every burka was a prospective American ready to emerge like a butterfly from a chrysalis.

But if large parts of the Muslim world reject what seemed to be an historic opportunity to create democratic governments and instead dissolve into a chaotic regime of permanent warfare, we might conclude that there really is something different about America—that our democracy is the product of a unique set of precedents, the melding of the idea of covenant brought here by radical Protestants, the traditions of Anglo-Saxon democracy, and the far-reaching wisdom of our founders. To present-day Americans, that is an unnerving thought. We do not wish upon ourselves that sort of responsibility. We eschew our debts to deep traditions. We want to reinvent ourselves at will, to shop for new identities, to play at the cultural cutting-edge.

What these events might teach us, rather, is that America really is exceptional and that there is no contradiction in cultivating our democracy at home while acting elsewhere in tough-minded pursuit of our security interests.

***

David P. Goldman, Tablet Magazine’s classical music critic, is the Spengler columnist for Asia Times Online, associate fellow at the Middle East Forum, and the author of How Civilizations Die (and Why Islam Is Dying, Too) and the essay collection It's Not the End of the World, It's Just the End of You.

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Attacks kill 95 in Iraq, hint of Syrian spillover

May 20, 5:25 PM (ET)
By SINAN SALAHEDDIN

(AP) An Iraqi woman passes by the scene of a car bomb attack in Kamaliyah neighborhood, a predominantly...
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BAGHDAD (AP) - Iraq's wave of bloodshed sharply escalated Monday with more than a dozen car bombings across the country, part of attacks that killed at least 95 people and brought echoes of past sectarian carnage and fears of a dangerous spillover from Syria's civil war next door.

The latest spiral of violence - which has claimed more than 240 lives in the past week - carries the hallmarks of the two sides that brought nearly nonstop chaos to Iraq for years: Sunni insurgents, including al-Qaida's branch in Iraq, and Shiite militias defending their newfound power after Saddam Hussein's fall.

But the widening shadow and regional brinksmanship from Syria's conflict now increasingly threaten to feed into Iraq's sectarian strife, heightening concerns that Iraq could be turning toward civil war.

The Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki must balance its close ties with Iran - the main regional ally of Syria's Bashar Assad - and its position among fellow Arab League members and neighboring Turkey, which strongly back Syria's mainly Sunni opposition.

(AP) Civilians inspect the scene of a car bomb attack in the Kamaliyah neighborhood, a predominantly...
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Al-Maliki appears determined to boost security crackdowns to keep Iraq's minority Sunnis from taking a more high-profile role in the anti-Assad forces, which have received pledges of support from the longtime insurgent group al-Qaida in Iraq.

There have been no claims of responsibility for the current flare-up of violence, capped by Monday's body count that was the highest death toll for a single day in 10 months. Yet some analysts believe it's difficult to separate Iraq's deep sectarian suspicions from the Shiite-Sunni split over Assad, which has also led to clashes in Lebanon.

"Iraq now has moved into a bigger circle that covers Syria and Lebanon," said Baghdad-based political affairs analyst Hadi Jalo.

Al-Maliki is not only worried about his Sunni rivals possibly deepening their involvement in the rebel cause in Syria, said Patrick Clawson, director of research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Al-Maliki's worries extend to Iraq's semiautonomous northern Kurdish region, which has close links to Assad foe Turkey.

"Al-Maliki believes this is the time to be tough and show he is in control of the country," said Clawson. "What we are seeing is the backlash to that."

(AP) Civilians inspect the scene of a car bomb attack in Kamaliyah neighborhood, a predominantly Shiite...
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The U.S. and its Western allies strongly support Syria's political opposition, but have been reluctant to significantly boost weapons flow to rebel fighters because of worries over Islamic militants who have joined the anti-Assad brigades. But the deepening refugee crisis in the region, along with concern over spillover violence, is often cited by Arab states and Turkey urging greater Western intervention.

Sectarian tensions have been worsening since Iraq's minority Sunnis began expanding protests over what they say is mistreatment at the hands of the Shiite-led government. Many Sunnis contend that much of the country's current turmoil is rooted in the policies of al-Maliki's government, which they accuse of feeding sectarian tension by becoming more aggressive toward Sunnis after the U.S. military withdrawal in December 2011.

Mass demonstrations by Sunnis, which began in December, have largely been peaceful. However, the number of attacks rose sharply after a deadly security crackdown on a Sunni protest camp in northern Iraq on April 23.

Hours after Monday's stunning blitz of attacks - stretching from north of Baghdad to the southern city of Basra - al-Maliki accused militant groups of trying to exploit Iraq's political instability and vowed to resist attempts to "bring back the atmosphere of the sectarian war."

He also blamed the recent spike in violence on the wider unrest in the region, particularly Syria.

(AP) Iraqi security force members gather at the site of a car bomb attack in front of a crowded popular...
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"You cannot remove the Syrian element from what's happening in Iraq," said Sami al-Faraj, director of the Kuwait Center for Strategic Studies. "The outcome of the war in Syria has big consequences for both Iraq's Sunnis and Shiites. What we see now is an extension of that in some respects."

The worst of Monday's violence took place in Baghdad, where 10 car bombs ripped through open-air markets and other areas of Shiite neighborhoods, killing at least 48 people and wounding more than 150, police officials said.

In Balad, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of Baghdad, a car bomb exploded next to a bus carrying Iranian pilgrims, killing 13 Iranians and one Iraqi, a police officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media.

Meanwhile, in the predominantly Shiite city of Basra in southern Iraq, twin car bombings - outside a restaurant and at the city's main bus station - killed at least 13 people and wounded 40, according to provincial police spokesman Col. Abdul-Karim al-Zaidi and the head of the city's health directorate, Riadh Abdul-Amir.

"All of a sudden, a thunderous explosion lifted my car and put it back on the ground," said Sami Saadon, a Basra taxi driver who suffered shrapnel injuries in his chest. "I could barely open the door and I crawled outside the car, where smoke and dust were everywhere."

(AP) Civilians inspect the site of a car bomb attack in front of a crowded popular restaurant in Basra,...
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A car bomb later struck Shiite worshippers as they were leaving a mosque in the southern city of Hillah, killing nine and wounding 26, police and health officials said.

Monday's violence also struck Sunni areas.

A car bomb in Samarra, north of Baghdad, went off near a gathering of pro-government Sunni militia waiting outside a military base to receive salaries, killing three and wounding 13. In the western province of Anbar, the hub of Sunni power, gunmen ambushed two police patrols near the town of Haditha, killing eight policemen, officials said.

Also in Anbar, authorities found 13 bodies dumped in a remote desert area. The victims, who included eight policemen kidnapped by gunmen on Friday, had been killed by a gunshot to the head, officials said.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

The surge in bloodshed has exasperated Iraqis, who have lived for years with the fear and uncertainty bred of random violence.

"How long do we have to continue living like this, with all the lies from the government?" asked 23-year-old Baghdad resident Malik Ibrahim. "Whenever they say they have reached a solution, the bombings come back stronger than before."

---

Associated Press writers Nabil Al-Jurani in Basra and Brian Murphy in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.

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Pakistan's presumptive PM calls for Taliban talks

May 20, 3:11 PM (ET)
By ZARAR KHAN

(AP) Pakistan's former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif addresses party workers in Lahore, Pakistan on...
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ISLAMABAD (AP) - Pakistan's presumptive prime minister called for peace talks with Taliban militants at war with the government Monday, potentially charting a course that could put him at odds with the country's powerful army.

Nawaz Sharif said "terrorism" was one of the most serious problems plaguing the country and any offer by the Pakistani Taliban to talk "should be taken seriously."

"All options should be tried, and guns are not a solution to all problems," Sharif said in a speech to newly elected members of his party in the eastern city of Lahore. "Why shouldn't we sit and talk, engage in dialogue?"

The Pakistani Taliban have been waging a bloody insurgency against the government for years that has killed thousands of people. The militants say they are fighting to enforce Islamic law in the country and end the government's alliance with the United States.

(AP) Pakistan's former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif addresses party workers in Lahore, Pakistan on...
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The Pakistani army has launched multiple operations against the Taliban in their strongholds along the border with Afghanistan, but the militants have proven resilient and continue to carry out near-daily attacks.

Army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who met with Sharif on Saturday for the first time since the May 11 election, laid out strict conditions last month for any potential peace deal with the Taliban.

"We sincerely desire that all those who have strayed and have picked up arms against the nation return to the national fold," Kayani said in a rare public speech. "However, this is only possible once they unconditionally submit to the state, its constitution and the rule of law."

It's unclear whether Sharif's concept of peace fits within this framework. Activists have raised concerns that Sharif's government could accept militant demands that would threaten human rights in the country, especially for women.

The Pakistani government has previously struck peace deals with the Taliban, but they haven't held and have been criticized for allowing the militants to regroup.

(AP) Supporters of Pakistani cricket star and leader of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, Imran Khan,...
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Sharif has called for peace talks in the past, but Monday's speech was the first time he has done so publicly since his Pakistan Muslim League-N party scored a resounding victory in the election.

The Taliban have shown an inclination to negotiate with Sharif, who is known to be a devout Muslim and whose party has been criticized for not cracking down on Islamic militants in its stronghold of Punjab province.

Taliban spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan told The Associated Press last week that the group would consider declaring a cease-fire if Sharif seemed serious about holding peace talks.

The Taliban carried out a spate of attacks against candidates and workers from secular parties in the run-up to the election. The violence raised concerns that the group was trying to influence the outcome of the election by making campaigning easier for candidates like Sharif who are perceived to take a softer line toward the militants.

Also Monday, a judge granted bail to Pakistan's former military ruler in a case related to the assassination of ex-Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, one of his lawyers, Salman Safdar, said.

(AP) In this Monday, April 15, 2013 photo, Pakistan's former President and military ruler Pervez...
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Despite the bail, retired Gen. Pervez Musharraf will remain under house arrest on the outskirts of the capital, Islamabad, in connection with two other cases against him, including one related to his decision to sack senior judges while in power.

The roughly $20,000 bail comes days after the lawyer who filed the judges case against Musharraf, Mohammad Aslam Ghumman, said he had decided not to testify against the former military strongman for the sake of "national interest."

Ghumman's decision has fueled speculation that Musharraf may be allowed to leave the country before the new government led by Sharif takes power in early June. The bail in the Bhutto case could intensify that speculation.

Musharraf seized power by toppling Sharif in a military coup in 1999 and ruled for almost decade until he was forced to step down in 2008 because of growing discontent with his rule. He spent years in self-imposed exile and returned in March to compete in the recent election.

But he was disqualified from the election because of his actions while in power, and has faced a raft of legal challenges against him since he arrived. He was placed under house arrest in April, and his name has been placed on the exit control list, preventing him from leaving the country.

Government prosecutors have accused Musharraf of being involved in the gun and suicide attack that killed Bhutto in 2007 when he was in power. They have also blamed him for not providing the former premier with enough security.

Musharraf has denied the allegations and claimed they were politically motivated. He has blamed the Pakistani Taliban for the attack.

Suspected militants killed a policeman who was guarding a polio vaccination team in Pakistan's northwest Bajur tribal area on Monday, said local government administrator Faramosh Khan. It was the latest in a spate of attacks on polio workers in the last six months.

Militants have accused the polio workers of being U.S. spies and claimed the vaccine is intended to make Muslim children sterile.

---_

Associated Press writers Atif Raza in Karachi, Pakistan, Anwarullah Khan in Khar, Pakistan, Rasool Dawar in Peshawar, Pakistan, and Asif Shahzad in Islamabad contributed to this report.

About 600 Afghan women, girls are behind bars for 'moral crimes,' Human Rights Watch says - @Reuters

32 mins ago by editor

Syria's President Assad has put forward names of 5 officials from his administration for internationally-sponsored peace talks with the Syrian opposition, EU sources say - @Reuters

1 hour ago by editor

Syrian opposition groups are meeting in Madrid to compile a draft political solution to the conflict - @AJELive

2 hours ago from www.aljazeera.com by editor

US military turns off its Wi-Fi service inside prison at Guantanamo Bay following threats by the hacker collective Anonymous - @BBCNews

6 mins ago from www.bbc.co.uk by editor

--------

21 May 2013 Last updated at 07:35 ET

Guantanamo wi-fi shut down after Anonymous threat

The American military has turned off its wi-fi service inside the prison at Guantanamo Bay following threats by the hacker collective Anonymous.

Access to social networks, including Facebook and Twitter, from military computers has also been blocked because of the threat.

Anonymous had threatened to "disrupt activities" at the base, in solidarity with the prisoners on hunger strike.

It launched "Operation Guantanamo" on Saturday, 18 May.

At the end of April, 100 of the 166 Guantanamo Bay inmates were staging a hunger strike over conditions in the jail and their ongoing imprisonment.

The Anonymous three-day campaign began on the 100th day of the strike.

The group used social media to encourage others to send "twitterstorms, email bombs and fax bombs" in order to raise awareness of the protest.

Protests were also staged outside the White House and the prison itself.

The phone numbers of the White House and various military command centres were also posted on the Anonymous website.

"We stand in solidarity with the Guantanamo hunger strikers," reads a message written by the group.

"We will shut down Guantanamo."

No disruption had been reported so far, Lt Col Samuel House told the Associated Press news agency.

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Chinese hackers who breached Google gained access to sensitive data, U.S. officials say
By Ellen Nakashima, Published: May 20

Chinese hackers who breached Google’s servers several years ago gained access to a sensitive database with years’ worth of information about U.S. surveillance targets, according to current and former government officials.

The breach appears to have been aimed at unearthing the identities of Chinese intelligence operatives in the United States who may have been under surveillance by American law enforcement agencies.

It’s unclear how much the hackers were able to discover. But former U.S. officials familiar with the breach said the Chinese stood to gain valuable intelligence. The database included information about court orders authorizing surveillance — orders that could have signaled active espionage investigations into Chinese agents who maintained e-mail accounts through Google’s Gmail service.

“Knowing that you were subjects of an investigation allows them to take steps to destroy information, get people out of the country,” said one former official, who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a highly sensitive matter. The official said the Chinese could also have sought to deceive U.S. intelligence officials by conveying false or misleading information.

Although Google disclosed an intrusion by Chinese hackers in 2010, it made no reference to the breach of the database with information on court orders. That breach prompted deep concerns in Washington and led to a heated, months-long dispute between Google and the FBI and Justice Department over whether the FBI could access technical logs and other information about the breach, according to the officials.

Google declined to comment for this article, as did the FBI.

Last month, a senior Microsoft official suggested that Chinese hackers had targeted the company’s servers about the same time that Google’s system was compromised. The official said Microsoft concluded that whoever was behind the breach was seeking to identify accounts that had been tagged for surveillance by U.S. national security and law enforcement agencies.

“What we found was the attackers were actually looking for the accounts that we had lawful wiretap orders on,” David W. Aucsmith, senior director of Microsoft’s Institute for Advanced Technology in Governments, said at a conference near Washington, according to a recording of his remarks.

“If you think about this, this is brilliant counterintelligence,” he said in the address, which was first reported by the online magazine CIO.com. “You have two choices: If you want to find out if your agents, if you will, have been discovered, you can try to break into the FBI to find out that way. Presumably that’s difficult. Or you can break into the people that the courts have served paper on and see if you can find it that way. That’s essentially what we think they were trolling for, at least in our case.”

Microsoft now disputes that its servers had been compromised as part of the cyberespionage campaign that targeted Google and about 20 other companies. Aucsmith, who cited that campaign in his remarks, said in a statement to The Washington Post that his comments were “not meant to cite any specific Microsoft analysis or findings about motive or attacks.”

The U.S. government has been concerned about Chinese hacking since at least the early 2000s, when network intrusions were discovered at U.S. energy labs and defense contractors. The FBI has for years led a national security investigation into Chinese cyberespionage, some of which has been linked to the Chinese military.

The Chinese, according to government, academic and industry analysts, have stolen massive volumes of data from companies in sectors including defense, technology, aerospace, and oil and gas. Gen. Keith B. Alexander, the director of the National Security Agency, has referred to the theft of proprietary data as the “greatest transfer of wealth in history.”

The Chinese emphatically deny that they are engaged in hacking into U.S. computer systems and have said that many intrusions into their own networks emanate from servers in the United States.

“The Chinese government prohibits online criminal offenses of all forms, including cyber attack and cyber espionage, and has done what it can to combat such activities in accordance with Chinese laws,” a Chinese Embassy spokesman, Yuan Gao, said in an e-mail. “We’ve heard all kinds of allegations but have not seen any hard evidence or proof.”

Experts said an elaborate network of interconnected routers and servers can make the Internet tailor-made for the shadowy work of spying and counterspying. It stands to reason, they said, that adversaries would be interested in finding vulnerabilities in the networks of the companies that authorize surveillance on behalf of the government.

“It is an absolute rule of thumb that the best counterintelligence tool isn’t defensive — it’s offensive. It’s penetrating the other service,” said Michael V. Hayden, a former director of the National Security Agency and the CIA, who said he had no knowledge of the incidents. Hacking into a surveillance database, he said, “is a form of that.”

Google’s crisis began in December 2009, when, several former government officials said, the firm discovered that Chinese hackers had penetrated its corporate networks through “spear phishing” — a technique in which an employee was effectively deceived into clicking a bogus link that downloads a malicious program. The hackers had been rooting around insider Google’s servers for at least a year.

Alarmed by the scope and audacity of the breach, the company went public with the news in January 2010, becoming the first U.S. firm to voluntarily disclose an intrusion that originated in China. In a blog post, Google chief legal officer David Drummond said hackers stole the source code that powers Google’s vaunted search engine and also targeted the e-mail accounts of activists critical of China’s human rights abuses.

As Google was responding to the breach, its technicians made another startling discovery: its database with years of information on surveillance orders had been hacked. The database included information on thousands of orders issued by judges around the country to law enforcement agents seeking to monitor suspects’ e-mails.

The most sensitive orders, however, came from a federal court that approves surveillance of foreign targets such as spies, diplomats, suspected terrorists and agents of other governments. Those orders, issued under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, are classified.

Google did not disclose that breach publicly, but soon after detecting it, the company alerted the FBI, former officials said. Bureau officials told FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, who briefed President Obama.

At one point, an FBI supervisory agent working on Chinese cyberespionage cases traveled to Google’s Mountain View, Calif., headquarters to conduct a national security investigation, the former officials said. The company, without any guarantees about the scope of the investigation, denied access.

The bureau undertook an extensive assessment to include determining whether individuals under surveillance had moved to other means of communication. Although the assessment showed no damage to national security because of the breach, Google took steps to shield sensitive data.

Michael M. DuBose, former chief of the Justice Department’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section, declined to comment on either the Microsoft or Google cases. But, he said, in general such intrusions serve as “a wake-up call for the government that the overall security and effectiveness of lawful interception and undercover operations is dependent in large part on security standards in the private sector.

“Those,” he said, “clearly need strengthening.”

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http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/storie...ME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-05-21-08-05-17


May 21, 10:08 AM EDT

Reports: Iran bars 2 top figures from June ballot

By ALI AKBAR DAREINI
Associated Press

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iranian news websites boosted speculation Tuesday that election overseers have barred two prominent but divisive figures from next month's presidential ballot, in a move that would eliminate a threat to the country's hard-liners.

The Tasnimnews.com website said the Guardian Council, which vets candidates, has rejected former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, a close confidant of outgoing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The semiofficial Mehr news agency carried the same report.

Mehr said only eight hopefuls, most of them hardliners loyal to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have been approved. The reports are not official. The announcement on the list for the June 14 election is expected later Tuesday or Wednesday.

Rafsanjani's unexpected entry into the presidential race had re-energized reformist groups that have been under relentless pressure and crackdowns since major protests following Ahmadinejad's disputed re-election in 2009. His candidacy scrambled the vote's equation because of his popularity, reputation and potential to draw voters away from conservatives

If he is indeed barred from the race, it would deal a demoralizing blow to pro-reform groups and dim hopes for a high turnout. It also would boost the chances of a Khamenei loyalist winning the election.

The Iranian media didn't provide any reason for disqualifying Rafsanjani, but his opponents have claimed that at the age of 78, he is too old to run the country.

On Monday, Abbas Ali Kadkhodaei, spokesman for the Guardian Council that vets election candidates, said the council would bar candidates who are limited in their physical abilities, which was widely seen as a jab at Rafsanjani.

Rafsanjani is a founder of the 1979 Islamic Revolution that brought the clerics to power, and was the closest confident of the revolution's spiritual leader, the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The country's current supreme leader, Khamenei, largely owes his position to Rafsanjani's support.

The head of the Guardian Council, 87-year-old Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, warned Friday that those who did not distance themselves from 2009 turmoil were not eligible to run, referring to the popular protests over the disputed re-election of Ahmadinejad as "sedition."

It was another hint that Rafsanjani, who is viewed as a serious threat to hardliners, could be banned.

A government crackdown in 2009 put an end to street protests, but Rafsanjani remained critical over the way the ruling system dealt with the crisis.

Mashaei's purported disqualification, meanwhile, is a serious blow to Ahmadinejad, depriving him of levers of power with which to influence the next government. Ahmadinejad cannot run in this election because Iran's constitution bars him from seeking a third term.

Ahmadinejad has been promoting Mashaei, whose daughter is married to the president's son, as successor in recent years. But Mashaei is believed to have been at the heart of a messy power struggle between Ahmadinejad and the ruling clerics in recent years, earning him the enmity of Iran's hard-liners.

Hard-liners accuse Mashaei of being the leader of a "deviant current" that seeks to undermine Islamic rule and compromise the Islamic system. Some critics have even claimed he conjured black magic spells to fog Ahmadinejad's mind.

According to the unofficial news reports, among those approved for the June ballot are Iran's top nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, prominent lawmaker Gholam Ali Haddad Adel, former foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati and Tehran mayor Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf - all top Khamenei loyalists. Former chief of the Revolutionary Guards, Mohsen Rezaei and a little known former minister have also reportedly been approved.

Of eight, only two of them are pro-reform figures: Former top nuclear negotiator Hasan Rowhani and former first vice president Mohammad Reza Aref.

Reformers now have the option of rallying behind Aref or Rowhani or boycott the polls altogether.

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http://www.france24.com/en/20130521-philippines-boosts-military-resist-bullies

21 May 2013 - 15H27

Philippines boosts military to resist 'bullies'



AFP - Philippine President Benigno Aquino on Tuesday announced a $1.8-billion military upgrade to help defend his country's maritime territory against "bullies", amid an ever-worsening dispute with China.

The announcement came on the same day that the Philippines filed a protest with China over the "illegal and provocative" presence of a Chinese warship and two other vessels at a Filipino-claimed shoal in the disputed South China Sea.

In thinly veiled comments referring to China, Aquino vowed during a speech to mark the navy's 115th anniversary that the armed forces would be given the resources necessary to protect Philippine sovereignty.

"We have a clear message to the world: The Philippines is for Filipinos, and we have the capability to resist bullies entering our backyard," Aquino told naval chiefs.

Aquino detailed a 75-billion-peso ($1.82-billion) military modernisation programme that gives priority to upgrading the navy, which is one of the weakest in Southeast Asia.

He said by 2017 the Philippines would acquire two new frigates, two helicopters capable of anti-submarine warfare, three fast vessels for coastal patrols and eight amphibious assault vehicles.

"We will also improve our communications, intelligence and surveillance systems," he said.

The Philippines has been locked for more than two years in an increasingly hostile dispute with China over rival claims to the South China Sea, which is believed to sit atop vast resources of oil and gas.

China insists it has sovereign rights to most of the sea, even waters close to the coasts of Southeast Asian countries.

Aside from the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia and Taiwan also claim parts of the sea.

China has in recent years taken what the Philippines and Vietnam say are increasingly aggressive actions to assert its claims.

In the latest incident, the Philippines said Tuesday that three Chinese vessels -- a warship and two maritime surveillance vessels -- had established a presence near the Filipino-claimed Second Thomas Shoal, also known as Ayungin.

"We (have) filed with the Chinese embassy in Manila our protest on the provocative and illegal presence of Chinese government ships around Ayungin Shoal," foreign affairs department spokesman Raul Hernandez said.

"The intrusions and the activities... in our (waters) is part of the Chinese projection of their claim which we believe is excessive and in violation of international law."

Second Thomas Shoal is a tiny group of islets and reefs near the Spratly Islands chain, about 200 kilometres (120 miles) north of the Philippine island of Palawan.

It is very close to Mischief Reef, which the Philippines controlled until China built structures on it in the mid-1990s.

The Philippines says China has also since last year occupied a shoal 230 kilometres (140 miles) from the main Philippine island of Luzon.

Even with the extra spending announced by Aquino on Tuesday, China's military budget would still dwarf China's.

China announced in March its defence budget for 2013 would be about $115 billion.

The Philippines is also facing intense diplomatic pressure from Taiwan after the Filipino coastguard shot dead a Taiwanese fishermen this month in waters near the South China Sea.

The Philippines insists the Taiwanese fishing vessel was illegally in Filipino waters. However Taiwan denies this and has suspended important trade ties in a bid to punish the Philippines.

For links see article source....
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http://www.france24.com/en/20130521-syria-israel-exchange-fire-across-golan-heights-border

Latest update: 21/05/2013
- Golan Heights - Israel - Israeli settlements - Syria

Syria, Israel exchange fire across Golan Heights border

© AFP
Israel’s military said Tuesday that gunfire from Syria had hit a patrol on the Golan Heights, prompting troops to fire back, while the Syrian army said it destroyed an Israeli vehicle it claims had crossed the ceasefire line.
By News Wires (text)

Israel's army and Syrian forces exchanged fire across the sensitive ceasefire line on the Golan Heights on Tuesday, but the Jewish state denied one of its vehicles had been destroyed.

The Syrian army "fired on an Israeli patrol, which we confirmed six hours ago, but did not destroy a vehicle or kill anyone," Israeli military spokesman Avichai Adraee wrote on Twitter.

Syria claimed to have destroyed an Israeli military vehicle it said had crossed the ceasefire line in the Golan Heights during the incident.

"On Tuesday at 1:10 am (2100 GMT Monday), our armed forces destroyed an Israeli vehicle with everything it was carrying, which came from the occupied territories," said the Syrian army in a statement carried by state media.

"The vehicle passed the ceasefire line and was moving towards the village of Bir-Ajam situated in the liberated Syrian zone" of the Golan, it said, adding that the operation was at aimed "lifting the morale" of rebel forces in the region.

Israel earlier said it had responded to fire from inside Syria that hit a military patrol in the Golan Heights overnight, damaging a military vehicle.

"Overnight, shots were fired at an IDF patrol on the border in the central Golan Heights, damaging a military vehicle," said a statement on the army's website. No one was wounded, it added.

"In response, IDF forces returned precise fire at the source of the gunfire. They reported a direct hit," the statement added.

"The IDF views the recent incidents in the north with concern and has lodged a complaint with UNDOF," the UN Disengagement Force responsible for patrolling that area.

Adraee emphasised on his Twitter account that only "light damage" had been sustained from the Syrian fire.

Early on Monday, the army reported that small-arms fire from Syria hit the Israeli-occupied Golan overnight, causing no harm or damage. The army also filed a complaint with the UN force on that occasion.

The Golan Heights have been tense since the beginning of the conflict in Syria more than two years ago.

However, there have been only minor flare-ups in the region to date, with Syrian shells crashing in the occupied Golan and Israel firing in retaliation.

In recent weeks there were four incidents of fire coming from Syria and straying across the ceasefire line.

Last week projectiles from Syria hit Mount Hermon, causing the popular site on the Golan to close down to visitors.

The US State Department warned on Monday that the occupation of villages along the Lebanese-Syrian border by Lebanon's Shiite movement Hezbollah "inflamed regional sectarian tensions."

Israel launched air raids inside Syria this month targeting what sources said were arms destined for its arch-foe Hezbollah, whose members have joined the fight against rebels alongside the Syrian military.

The strikes ramped up regional tension, with Syria threatening to hit back.

Israel, which is technically at war with Syria, seized 1,200 square kilometres (460 square miles) of the Golan from its Arab neighbour in the 1967 Six-Day War.

It later annexed the territory, in a move never recognised by the international community.

(AFP)

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Hezbollah: Syria to provide 'game-changing' weapons

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http://abcnews.go.com/International...china-warships-presence-19222992#.UZuemNi5KCk

Philippines Protests Chinese Warship's Presence
By JIM GOMEZ Associated Press
CAVITE, Philippines May 21, 2013 (AP)

The Philippines has protested the presence of a Chinese warship, two surveillance vessels and fishing boats off a shoal occupied by its military in the disputed Spratly Islands, in the latest territorial squabble between the Asian countries, officials said Tuesday.

President Benigno Aquino III warned, meanwhile, that the Philippines is ready to fight back against any threat and announced plans to buy more warships and aircraft for its ill-equipped military, including anti-submarine attack helicopters.

"Our message to the whole world is clear: what belongs to the Philippines belongs to the Philippines," Aquino said in a speech at a naval base in Cavite province south of Manila. "We can fight back and defend ourselves every time somebody will threaten us right in our own home ground."

Department of Foreign Affairs spokesman Raul Hernandez said the Philippines denounced the "provocative and illegal presence" of Beijing's ships off Ayungin Shoal in the South China Sea, adding the area is "an integral part of our national territory."

"The Philippines calls on China to respect sovereign rights and jurisdiction," he said.

Chinese diplomats did not immediately react to the protest, which Hernandez said was filed two weeks ago at the Chinese Embassy in Manila.

The shoal, 196 kilometers (122 miles) from the southwestern Philippine province of Palawan, is guarded by a Filipino marine unit based in a rusty warship that ran aground on a coral outcrop several years ago. The shoal lies near Mischief Reef, which the Philippines has claimed but was occupied by China in 1995, sparking intense protests from Manila.

By allowing fishermen in several boats to fish off the shoal, China has violated the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, which grants coastal states exclusive right to exploit marine resources in waters within 370 kilometers (200 nautical miles) of their coast, Hernandez said.

It's the latest territorial rift between the Asian countries, which also are locked in other long-simmering disputes in the South China Sea. Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam also claim parts of the Spratlys, a chain of islands, islets and reefs.

Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin said another protest might be lodged if authorities confirm that two ships which chased a Philippine official's ferry boat last week near Ayungin Shoal were Chinese government vessels.

Eugenio Bito-onon, mayor of a chain of Philippine-occupied islands in the Spratlys, said he was traveling with 178 crewmen and companions on a boat to Palawan at night last week when two unidentified ships chased them away from Ayungin. The ships focused spotlights on Bito-onon's boat, preventing him and his companions from identifying the vessels, he said.

He said a suspected Chinese warship also cut through his four-boat convoy twice last October while he and his staff were traveling to a Philippine-occupied island in the Spratlys. He said he took pictures and video of the gray ship, its hull marked with the number 995, and reported the incident to the military.

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Posted for fair use....
http://abcnews.go.com/International...sts-10-iranian-spy-ring-19225088#.UZufRNi5KCk

Saudi Arabia Says Arrests 10 From Iranian Spy Ring
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia May 21, 2013 (AP)

A Saudi official says police have detained 10 more members of an alleged Iranian spy ring — eight Saudis, one Lebanese and one Turkish national.

Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Mansour al-Turki said in a statement Tuesday that investigations in the March arrest of 18 alleged spies had led to the new arrests.

The ministry said on March 19 that security authorities had arrested 18 people suspected of espionage, including an Iranian, a Lebanese and 16 Saudis. The Lebanese was released for lack of evidence. Iran denied any involvement in the espionage.

The ministry said earlier that material evidence and confessions from the detainees proved that members of the group had received money from the Islamic Republic of Iran for information on vital locations in the kingdom.

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http://abcnews.go.com/International...icting-us-air-base-2014-19225630#.UZufp9i5KCk

Kyrgyzstan Bent on Evicting US Air Base in 2014
BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan May 21, 2013 (AP)

Kyrgyzstan's president has reaffirmed that next year the Central Asian nation will evict the U.S. air base that supports military operations in nearby Afghanistan.

President Almazbek Atambayev has repeatedly pledged to shut the Manas Transit Center next year, dismissing U.S. assumptions the base would remain in exchange for higher rent. The United States pays $60 million annually for the base.

Atambayev said Tuesday the Kyrgyz Cabinet had drafted a bill on the base closure and submitted it to parliament. He said Kyrgyzstan would compensate for the loss of revenue through other economic projects.

All U.S. troops moving in and out of nearby Afghanistan travel through Manas. Large numbers of troops are set to flow through the facility as part of the withdrawal of most international troops next year.

With everything else going on I missed this one....Shades of what's been happening in the UK and France....

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Posted for fair use....
http://www.timesofoman.com/News/Article-16002.aspx


Seven arrested in second night of Stockholm rioting
by AFP
May 21, 2013 , 5 : 04 pm

Stockholm: Seven people were arrested as violence flared up for a second night in a deprived neighbourhood outside Stockholm and showed signs of spreading to other parts of the city, police said on Tuesday.

Four of those arrested in the suburb of Husby were detained, two were later released and a third person turned out to be under 15, the age of criminal responsibility in Sweden, according to local police chief Joergen Karlsson. "Around 10 cars were set on fire," he said.

Between 50 and 100 people took part in the rioting, and up to 300 people were estimated to have been on the streets, which was "probably more than on Sunday", Karlsson said. "We know that some of those who participated came from other parts of the country," he said.

Unrest first broke out in the troubled neighbourhood late Sunday, when local youths torched cars and threw rocks at police into the early hours, in riots believed to be linked to the deadly police shooting last week of an elderly man.

Early Tuesday, stones were thrown at firefighters as they tried to extinguish blazes in garbage containers and recycling stations, and several properties had their windows smashed. "Seven police officers suffered minor injuries in connection with the rock throwing," Karlsson said.

"There was a smaller riot south of the city, but whether there is any connection to what happened here is hard to say," he said.

At a Monday press conference, local activists claimed police had used excessive violence and called them "tramps, monkeys and negroes." The product of Sweden's controversial "million homes programme", Husby's tower blocks were built in the early seventies and are home to around 12,000 people, of which 80 percent come from immigrant backgrounds.

Authorities launched an ambitious effort to regenerate the low-income suburbs of northern Stockholm in 2007, but the area's youth unemployment rate remains one of the highest in Sweden.

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http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2013/05/21/Will-Riyadh-get-the-bomb-.html

Last Update: Tuesday, 21 May 2013 KSA 14:19 - GMT 11:19
Clear or nuclear: Will Saudi Arabia get the bomb?
Tuesday, 21 May 2013

Dr. Naser al-Tamimi, Special to Al Arabiya

As the impasse over Tehran’s nuclear program worsens, those most likely to be directly affected by an Iranian bomb are showing greater alarm. While the media fixates on Israel and its possible reaction, other regional players have no less at stake.

Despite Riyadh’s long-held advocacy of making the Middle East a zone free of weapons of mass destruction, there has been much speculation in the past few years about the possibility of its acquiring, or developing, nuclear weapons should Tehran obtain the bomb.

In the words of Saudi King Abdullah: “If Iran developed nuclear weapons (...) everyone in the region would do the same,” a sentiment echoed by Prince Turki al-Faisal, former head of Saudi Arabia’s General Intelligence Directorate.
Why go nuclear?

A major deterioration in U.S.-Saudi relations - especially if Washington fails to stop Tehran’s nuclear program or decides to scale back its military presence in the Middle East due to its recent energy discoveries and/or fiscal constraints - could force Riyadh to reconsider nuclear weapon acquisition to avoid having to face foreign aggression without U.S. security assurances.

The second issue is a mirror image of the first, namely, the concern over Iran’s nuclear ambitions. If Tehran crosses the threshold, this development could increase the pressure on Riyadh to walk in the nuclear path.

If U.S.-Saudi relations should falter, the Chinese would doubtless view it as an opportunity to take a more active role in Saudi affairs

Dr. Naser al-Tamimi

In Feb. 2012, a senior Saudi source told The Times: “There is no intention currently to pursue a unilateral military nuclear programme but the dynamics will change immediately if the Iranians develop their own nuclear capability (...) politically, it would be completely unacceptable to have Iran with a nuclear capability and not the kingdom.”

A third factor in the Saudi calculus is Israel’s nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities. Given Israel’s status as an assumed, but undeclared, nuclear weapons state, the most immediate consequence of Tehran’s crossing the nuclear threshold would be the possibility that Tel Aviv ends the ambiguity about its program and announces that it has nuclear weapons as a form of deterrence against Iran. This in turn will increase the pressure on Riyadh to acquire its own deterrent vis-à-vis Israel as well as Iran.

Perhaps a more critical factor in the nuclear equation is Saudi Arabia’s economic outlook. The country depends almost exclusively on oil export revenues to develop its economy, but the kingdom is an oil-consumer as well as a producer. Burning oil for electricity production currently consumes about a quarter of the crude oil Saudi Arabia produces, which could have very serious implications for the future. In 2012, the country consumed an average of 3.04 million barrels per day, according to the International Energy Agency.
Third-party connections

There have been suggestions that, rather than develop an indigenous nuclear program, Saudi Arabia would simply seek to buy nuclear warheads from Pakistan or China. According to a news report, Riyadh is beefing up its military links with Islamabad to counter Tehran’s expansionist plans, either by acquiring atomic weapons from Pakistan or its pledge of nuclear cover, a claim also reported in The Guardian.

Alternatively, Pakistan might offer a deterrent guarantee by deploying its own nuclear weapons, delivery systems and troops on Saudi territory. This arrangement could be particularly appealing to both Riyadh and Islamabad, allowing the Saudis to argue that they are not violating the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) since the weapons would not be theirs.
A Pakistani presence might also be preferable to a U.S. one, because stationing Muslim forces on Saudi soil would not trigger the kind of opposition that has in the past accompanied the deployment of American troops.

However, a good Pakistani working relationship with Washington is essential. The Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act of 2009 (also known as the Kerry-Lugar-Berman bill) authorized a massive increase in U.S. civilian assistance to Islamabad, tripling it to $1.5 billion a year.

Despite tensions between the two states, Pakistan remains keen on developing its relationship with Washington, and the continued proliferation of nuclear technology is unlikely to encourage either economic or military aid.

Indeed, selling complete nuclear weapons would come at a great political cost. Islamabad might forfeit U.S. foreign assistance and drive Washington into closer cooperation with its mortal enemy, India. Providing Riyadh with a Pakistani nuclear umbrella would also increase the likelihood of convergence between New Delhi and Tehran, as both nations might view the move as part of a larger Sunni threat.
Relations with Islamabad

Although relations with Islamabad are improving, the Saudi leadership has no great trust in Pakistan’s intentions. On the contrary, many WikiLeaks documents have revealed Saudi dissatisfaction with Pakistani politicians and policies.

Above all, Indian-Saudi economic relations have improved rapidly in recent years. At present, New Delhi is the fifth-largest trading partner for Saudi Arabia, and Riyadh is the top supplier of oil to India (approximately 700,000 barrels per day).

Saudi Arabia will take into account that India and China will be key markets for its petroleum products during the next two decades. In addition, Saudi nuclear acquisition could prompt a pre-emptive strike by Israel, especially if the sale became known before the weapon was activated.

In theory, the Saudis could pursue a nuclear option with the Chinese, but in the current strategic environment, it is hard to imagine this as a realistic scenario. Beijing and Riyadh have never had close military relations, largely because Washington has provided the Saudis with advanced military equipment, as well as security assurances against international threats, that China cannot provide.

While Beijing and Washington do not see eye to eye on many issues, including the severity of the Iranian threat, it is unlikely that Beijing would jeopardize its political, trade and other relations with Washington over supplying the Saudis with nuclear weapons.

Additionally, China is a member of the NPT system, and thus obliged “not in any way to assist, encourage, or induce any non-nuclear weapon State to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons or other explosive devices, or control over such weapons or explosive devices.”

Under the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Act of 1994, Beijing would face revocation of the U.S. nuclear cooperation agreement it worked so hard to secure, as well as the possible imposition of economic sanctions, if it were deemed to have “aided or abetted” the acquisition of nuclear weapons.

If U.S.-Saudi relations should falter, the Chinese would doubtless view it as an opportunity to take a more active role in Saudi affairs. However, there is no evidence suggesting that this relationship will sour in the near future; in fact, as shall be seen, it is clearly improving.
Domestic constraints

Technical barriers for entry into the nuclear club are high, and it is difficult for states to completely hide a clandestine military program from foreign intelligence observers. Indeed, many analysts believe that Riyadh’s talk about developing nuclear arms may be more intended to focus Western attention on its concerns about regional risks, than to indicate any kind of definitive action to go nuclear.

It is unlikely that the Saudis would want to proliferate at the present time; doing so would deeply strain the U.S.-Saudi relationship, perhaps to an irrevocable degree. It would also place Riyadh in breach of a memorandum of understanding signed with Washington in 2008, promising U.S. assistance with civil nuclear power on condition that Riyadh not pursue “sensitive nuclear technologies.”

Riyadh’s desire to maintain a strong relationship with Washington, especially in light of the kingdom’s desire to prevent unconventional terrorism within its borders, inhibits any appetite to develop nuclear weapons. There is also strong evidence that Washington is committed to defending Saudi Arabia. The Obama administration authorized, in the last three years, the largest ever arms sales to Riyadh.

Furthermore, the character of the Saudi establishment militates against taking the drastic step of nuclear proliferation. Journalist Richard Nield has noted that Riyadh has committed itself to a major industrialization and economic diversification campaign that will require sustained engagement with the rest of the world. “It’s not rational that they would jeopardize this in favour of a pre-emptive strike against the theoretical possibility of a nuclear-armed Iran.”

The same idea is echoed by Kate Amlin, a nuclear analyst at the U.S.-based Monterey Institute of International Studies, who believes that Saudi leaders would not want to incur the political and economic backlash resulting from pursuit of a nuclear arsenal, at a time when they are trying to integrate further into the international economy.

Finally, it would take many years and considerable financial cost for Riyadh to develop nuclear weapons. There exists a relatively strong consensus regarding the immature state of the Saudi nuclear technology infrastructure.

The country lacks the human expertise and technical knowledge necessary to develop a nuclear weapons program on its own. It does not operate nuclear power facilities, and its scientists do not have the necessary experience to enrich uranium for reactor fuel, to convert nuclear fuel, or operate reactors in desert conditions.

There have, however, been clear signs recently of the Saudis’ intent to enter the nuclear arena. In June 2010, the kingdom commissioned Finnish management consultancy Poyry to offer a strategy for nuclear and renewable energy use, and to study the economic and technical feasibility of becoming involved in all aspects of the nuclear power chain, including uranium enrichment.

Earlier that year, the Saudi government said it planned to build a new technology centre, the King Abdullah City for Nuclear and Renewable Energies, in Riyadh. Despite this, it will be years before it is developed; some experts estimate that the Saudi nuclear civilian plan might take up to 15 years.

Given that it is the world’s top oil exporter, handling a nuclear Saudi Arabia would be a delicate manner. However, at least for now, the Saudis have no alternative but to rely on a U.S. defence umbrella in the region. Still, it would be contrary to Riyadh’s practice to put all its eggs in one basket.

Thus, the kingdom will work in two parallel routes, strengthening its military, particularly the air force and navy, while aggressively seeking to buy the civil nuclear technology that could in the future provide the technical capacity and human resources for dealing with nuclear weapons. Overall, though not insurmountable, the obstacles to Saudi nuclearization are considerable. Much depends on Tehran’s ambitions, and the West’s determination to stymie them.


_____________________

Dr. Naser al-Tamimi is a UK-based Middle East analyst and the author of the forthcoming book “China-Saudi Arabia Relations, 1990-2012: Marriage of Convenience or Strategic Alliance? ” He is also a regular contributor to Al Arabiya, with particular research interest in energy politics, the political economy of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, and Middle East-Asia relations. The writer can be reached at Twitter: @ nasertamimi and email: nasertamimi@hotmail.co.uk

[An extended version of this article was first published in the Middle East Quarterly.]

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Posted for fair use....
http://www.algemeiner.com/2013/05/2...ter-iran-could-produce-dozens-a-bombs-a-year/

Israel’s Strategic Affairs Minister: Iran Could Produce Dozens of Nuclear Bombs a Year
May 21, 2013 8:52 am 2 comments
Zach Pontz

If Iran is not stopped from developing the capability to build a nuclear bomb, the Islamic Republic could become a “nuclear superpower” that produces dozens of bombs per year and has hundreds of bombs in its arsenal, Israel’s Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz said Tuesday.

“This is a ramified nuclear industry that has been built not to produce a few bombs but to produce fissionable material for dozens and hundreds of nuclear bombs. The issue at hand is not a nuclear state but the possibility of creating a nuclear superpower,” Steinitz said according to an Israeli government communique. “Today, the Natanz facility has about 12,000 centrifuges and plans to reach 54,000. It will be able to enrich enough uranium to produce 20-30 atomic bombs per annum.”

“The Iranian nuclear program is changing the rules of the game,” Steinitz added. “It is a kind of ‘black swan’ or ‘black eagle’ and it will change the state of Israel, the state of the Middle East and even the world situation. The Iranians’ ambition is to change the global balance of power from end to end, between Islam and the West.”

Steinitz also warned that, though Iran has not yet developed a nuclear weapon, it still poses a great risk to the West.

“It already has missiles directed towards Israel and missiles that cover much of mainland Europe and is making a concerted effort to basically have intercontinental ballistic missiles.”

Hummmm.....

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http://original.antiwar.com/lobe/20...y-to-tilt-regional-power-balance-says-report/

Nuclear Iran Unlikely to Tilt Regional Power Balance, Says Report
Jim Lobe and Joe Hitchon, May 21, 2013

A nuclear-armed Iran would not pose a fundamental threat to the United States and its regional allies like Israel and the Gulf Arab monarchies, according to a new report released here Friday by the Rand Corporation.

Entitled “Iran After the Bomb: How Would a Nuclear-Armed Tehran Behave?“, the report asserts that the acquisition by Tehran of nuclear weapons would above all be intended to deter an attack by hostile powers, presumably including Israel and the United States, rather than for aggressive purposes.

And while its acquisition may indeed lead to greater tension between Iran and its Sunni-led neighbours, the 50-page report concludes that Tehran would be unlikely to use nuclear weapons against other Muslim countries. Nor would it be able to halt its diminishing influence in the region resulting from the Arab Spring and its support for the Syrian government, according to the author, Alireza Nader.

“Iran’s development of nuclear weapons will enhance its ability to deter an external attack, but it will not enable it to change the Middle East’s geopolitical order in its own favour,” Nader, an international policy analyst at RAND, told IPS. “The Islamic Republic’s challenge to the region is constrained by its declining popularity, a weak economy, and a limited conventional military capability. An Iran with nukes will still be a declining power.”

The report reaches several conclusions all of which generally portray Iran as a rational actor in its international relations.

While Nader calls it a “revisionist state” that tries to undermine what it sees as a U.S.-dominated order in the Middle East, his report stresses that “it does not have territorial ambitions and does not seek to invade, conquer, or occupy other nations.”

Further, the report identifies the Islamic Republic’s military doctrine as defensive in nature. This posture is presumably a result of the volatile and unstable region in which it exists and is exacerbated by its status as a Shi’a and Persian-majority nation in a Sunni and Arab-majority region.

Iran is also scarred by its traumatic eight-year war with Iraq in which as many as one million Iranians lost their lives.

The new report comes amidst a growing controversy here over whether a nuclear-armed Iran could itself be successfully “contained” by the U.S. and its allies and deterred both from pursuing a more aggressive policy in the region and actually using nuclear weapons against its foes.

Iran itself has vehemently denied it intends to build a weapon, and the U.S. intelligence community has reported consistently over the last six years that Tehran’s leadership has not yet decided to do so, although the increasing sophistication and infrastructure of its nuclear program will make it possible to build one more quickly if such a decision is made.

Official U.S. policy, as enunciated repeatedly by top officials, including President Barack Obama, is to “prevent” Iran from obtaining a weapon, even by military means if ongoing diplomatic efforts and “crippling” economic sanctions fail to persuade Iran to substantially curb its nuclear program.

A nuclear-armed Iran, in the administration’s view – which is held even more fervently by the U.S. Congress where the Israel lobby exerts its greatest influence – represents an “existential threat” to the Jewish state.

In addition, according to the administration, Iran’s acquisition of a weapon would likely embolden it and its allies – notably Lebanon’s Hezbollah – to pursue more aggressive actions against their foes and could well set off a regional “cascade effect” in which other powers, particulary Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt, would feel obliged to launch nuclear-weapons programs of their own.

But a growing number of critics of the prevention strategy – particularly that part of it that would resort to military action against Iran – argue that a nuclear Iran will not be nearly as dangerous as the reigning orthodoxy assumes.

A year ago, for example, Paul Pillar, a veteran CIA analyst who served as National Intelligence Officer for the Middle East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, published a lengthy essay in ‘The Washington Monthly’, “We Can Live With a Nuclear Iran: Fears of a Bomb in Tehran’s Hands Are Overhyped, and a War to Prevent It Would Be a Disaster.”

More recently, Colin Kahl, an analyst at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) who also served as the Pentagon’s top Middle East policy adviser for much of Obama’s first term, published two reports – the first questioning the “cascade effect” in the region, and the second, published earlier this week and entitled “If All Else Fails: The Challenges of Containing a Nuclear-Armed Iran,” outlining a detailed “containment strategy” — including extending Washington’s nuclear umbrella over states that feel threatened by a nuclear Iran — the U.S. could follow to deter Tehran’s use of a nuclear bomb or its transfer to non-state actors, like Hezbollah, and persuade regional states not to develop their own nuclear arms capabilities.

In addition, Kenneth Pollack, a former CIA analyst at the Brookings Institution whose 2002 book, “The Threatening Storm” helped persuade many liberals and Democrats to support the U.S. invasion of Iraq, will publish a new book, “Unthinkable: Iran, the Bomb, and American Strategy”, that is also expected to argue for a containment strategy if Iran acquires a nuclear weapon.

Because both Brookings and CNAS are regarded as close to the administration, some neo-conservative commentators have expressed alarm that these reports are “trial balloons” designed to set the stage for Obama’s abandonment of the prevention strategy in favour of containment, albeit by another name.

It is likely that Nader’s study – coming as it does from RAND, a think tank with historically close ties to the Pentagon – will be seen in a similar light.

His report concedes that Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons would lead to greater tension with the Gulf Arab monarchies and thus to greater instability in the region. Moreover, an inadvertent or accidental nuclear exchange between Israel and Iran would be a “dangerous possibility”, according to Nader who also notes that the “cascade effect”, while outside the scope of his study, warrants “careful consideration”.

Despite Iran’s strong ideological antipathy toward Israel, the report does not argue that Tehran would attack the Jewish state with nuclear weapons, as that would almost certainly lead to the regime’s destruction.

Israel, in Nader’s view, fears that Iran’s nuclear capability could serve as an “umbrella” for Tehran’s allies that could significantly hamper Israel’s military operations in the Palestinian territories, the Levant, and the wider region.

But the report concludes that Tehran is unlikely to extend its nuclear deterrent to its allies, including Hezbollah, noting that the interests of those groups do not always – or even often – co-incide with Iran’s. Iran would also be highly unlikely to transfer nuclear weapons to them in any event, according to the report.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

This article was originally published at IPS News.
Read more by Jim Lobe

Nuclear Iran Can Be Contained and Deterred, Says Report – May 14th, 2013
More Diplomacy, Less Pressure Needed for Iran Settlement – Report – April 16th, 2013
Libya Intervention More Questionable in Rear View Mirror – April 5th, 2013
Escalating Korea Crisis Dims Hopes for Denuclearisation – April 3rd, 2013
P5+1 Coalition Fraying on Eve of Second Almaty Talks with Iran – April 2nd, 2013

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http://www.upiasia.com/Top-News/2013/05/21/Outside-View-An-ill-wind-from-Tehran/UPI-97301369109040/


Top News
Outside View: An ill wind from Tehran
Published By United Press International

HERNDON, Va., May 21 (UPI) -- With Iran's registration for presidential applicants closed, the West awaits the outcome of Tehran's June 14 election. But, for Iran's clerics, the outcome is probably already known.

When registration to run for Iran's highest political office ended March 11, more than 680 applicants had filed for candidacy. The next step is for the country's Guardian Council to determine who is qualified to run. With so many names that might seem like a daunting task but, in reality, it isn't.

It is important first to understand the relationship between the Guardian Council and Iran's top spiritual leader, Ali Khamenei, to whom the president answers.

The Guardian Council consists of 12 men. Six must be experts in Islamic law "conscious of the present needs and the issues of the day." They are personally selected by Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader.

The remaining six members must be jurists "specializing in different areas of law." Although not selected by the supreme leader, they are elected by Iran's parliament from among those nominated by the head judge -- who is appointed by Khamenei.

Thus, whether directly or indirectly, Khamenei wields influence over all 12.

The bottom line: No presidential candidate receives approval without Khamenei's support.

Since 30 percent of the registered candidates were women, 204 applicants are immediately dropped as Iran's constitution prohibits them from running. Only a handful of the remainder, whose names have already been floated by Khamenei to the Guardian Council, will make the final cut. The Guardian Council will announce who will run by Thursday.

There was some excitement among Iranians as a last-minute registrant was Hashemi Rafsanjani -- a previous president and one of Khamenei's antagonists after the 2009 election was stolen from the people by the supreme leader and his re-elected cohort President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

While Iranian newspapers promote Rafsanjani as a reformist, the West shouldn't get its hopes up.

Despite Rafsanjani's opposition to the 2009 presidential election results and confrontation with Khamenei, indications are the two have made nice. Rafsanjani wouldn't have registered without knowing he would make the cut by obtaining Khamenei's prior approval. And, by approving Rafsanjani, Khamenei gives the appearance of credibility to the presidential field.

When Rafsanjani -- considered a founding father of the Islamic Revolution -- ran for the presidency in 1989, he was approved by Khamenei who had just succeeded his predecessor as supreme leader. Rafsanjani became Iran's fourth president.

Rafsanjani was perceived to be a man of the people; the reality was he brutally eliminated opposition to Iran's theocracy -- even those residing outside the country. From a life of poverty, theocratic control and corruption enabled him to become a "mullah with moolah." As president, he amassed a personal fortune, now estimated at more than $1 billion dollars but left Iran's economy in shambles.

Hundreds of intellectuals were purged under Rafsanjani -- imprisoned, tortured or simply disappeared. Some dissidents were beaten to death.

As mentioned, Iran's borders posed no obstacle to Rafsanjani's brutal reach as he authorized numerous terrorist attacks abroad, including the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Argentina. This resulted in the issuance in November 2006 of a warrant by an Argentine judge for Rafsanjani's arrest.

(This was in addition to a 1997 German criminal court's conviction of an Iranian hit squad for killing four dissidents, ruling they had acted upon orders from a special committee of which the controlling members were Rafsanjani and Khamenei.)

Most telling about Rafsanjani are comments he has made displaying callousness for human life.

Reflecting upon targeting foreigners for terrorist attack, he once observed: "It is not difficult to kill Americans or Frenchmen. It is a bit difficult to kill (Israelis). But there are so many (Americans and Frenchmen) everywhere in the world."

More foreboding was a 2001 comment alluding to the future use of nuclear weapons by Iran, a statement made when it wasn't known Rafsanjani that had already initiated a secret nuclear weapons development program: "The use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything. However, it will only harm the Islamic world. It is not irrational to contemplate such an eventuality."

(Of course, such a naive comment demonstrates Rafsanjani's failure to understand Iranian nukes would release radiation which would then spread to other Muslim countries and to recognize the subsequent devastation that would be caused by an Israeli retaliatory strike from its submarine force.)

But such comments by a "man of the cloth" are most telling about how clerics and other Islamic fanatics view their religion to be committed to the destruction of non-believers.

With the United Nation's top nuclear inspector recently announcing (unsurprisingly) that the 10th round of talks this year concerning Iran's nuclear program have ended without agreement and no date for new talks, with the United States accepting such lack of progress due to the June 14 presidential election, with Iran's success under Khamenei getting it closer to its nuclear goal line, with Khamenei's final approval attaching only to a president who will support his policies, with Iran's demonstrated knack for dragging out the nuclear talks until the U.S. effort to prevent Tehran from getting nukes transitions into one of then trying to contain Iran's use of them, the West needs to recognize, even with a new president, an ill wind will still prevails in Tehran.

--

(Lt. Col. James G. Zumwalt, a retired Marine infantry officer, served in the Vietnam war, the U.S. invasion of Panama and the first Gulf War. He is the author of "Bare Feet, Iron Will--Stories from the Other Side of Vietnam's Battlefields," "Living the Juche Lie: North Korea's Kim Dynasty" and "Doomsday: Iran--The Clock is Ticking." He frequently writes on foreign policy and defense issues.)

--

(United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)
© 2013 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?428931-Spain-s-Angry-and-Unemployed-Young-Men

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http://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2013/05/21/an_empty_highway_in_spain_105177.html

http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/geopolitical-journey-empty-highway-spain

May 21, 2013
Spain's Angry and Unemployed Young Men
By George Friedman

Spain invites endless historical considerations, but on this trip I was struck by something more immediate and prosaic. We were on the road from Granada, near the coast, to Madrid, the capital in the center of the country. It was a four-lane highway, what Americans would call an interstate. The road was clean, well maintained and, as we moved north, nearly empty. Every few kilometers a car would pass in the opposite direction, or we would run alongside another car heading north.

It was not the paucity of cars that struck me; it was the almost complete absence of trucks. This was, after all, the road from the coast to the capital, not the only road but still a significant one. It was early afternoon on a weekday. The oddest moment came when we reached a tollbooth not too far from Madrid. There was only one booth open and when we pulled up there was no one in it and no coin or credit card slot. We waited, then we left. Perhaps the attendant was in the bathroom. Perhaps the revenue didn't justify paying a toll taker. Perhaps this was one of the austerity measures they had taken.

I will never know. What I do know is that the drive had a sort of post-apocalyptic feel, except that it was very clean. We marveled at it and then realized that there was nothing that ought to have surprised us about it. The unemployment rate in Spain is more than 27 percent. Gasoline costs 1.4 euros a liter (more than $6.50 a gallon). At that price, a drive is no longer a casual undertaking; it has to justify itself. As for trucks, when that many people are out of work -- and have been for many months -- the demand for goods declines to the point that trucks will be rare on the road.

Youth Unemployment and Desperation

I should have been prepared for this. We stayed in a very nice hotel in Granada. In the morning when we left the hotel, there was a beggar sitting on the sidewalk, his back to the wall, to our right. We paid little attention. Beggars are not uncommon in Europe or the United States. But there is an aesthetic to beggars. They look a certain way, owing to alcohol, madness or a very long time in trouble. When we returned in the late afternoon, he was still there. He was in his mid-to-late 20s, wearing glasses and reading a book. He was dressed in khakis and a decent shirt. He wasn't mad, he wasn't drunk and he wasn't like the hippies of my youth. He wasn't playing an instrument. He was sitting, absorbed in a book and begging. There were other beggars in Granada of the more conventional sort but also several more who looked like this one.

There is an argument that says Spanish unemployment is not as bad as it seems because a huge amount of it is youth unemployment. It is implied that youth unemployment has less social consequence. Certainly, it is more immediately destabilizing to have the head of a household with children out of work, but when -- as some say -- 57 percent of those under the age of 25 are unemployed, it also has consequences. Older people get bitter, despair and tend to be fatalistic with what life dealt them -- or at least a lot of them do.

A 22-year-old becomes desperate. When a young man is unemployed because he is a musician or an artist awaiting discovery or because he has lived carelessly, that's one thing. But this is different unemployment. It is a generation whose dreams are shattered. They may have hoped to be a businessman or a craftsman, but that's not going to happen now. Unemployment of this sort doesn't go away in a few months or years. This is the level of unemployment the United States experienced in the Great Depression, the kind of unemployment that scars an entire generation. World War II solved the unemployment problem in the United States, but there is no global war on the horizon for Spain. Imagine what would have happened in the United States if the war hadn't come and the Depression had lasted 20 years.

No one knows how long this will last but everyone suspects that it will be a long time, and I share that suspicion. How do you accept a situation that says you, at the age of 22, will live on the margins of society along with half of your friends? More important, how do you live with that fact if you worked hard preparing for a career?

Failures that are caused by living carelessly can be managed. The very carelessness of the life makes the consequence nearly morally required. Some people in every generation fail and fall to the bottom rungs of society because, well, bad things sometimes happen. Those people do not constitute a social force. But when nearly half a generation, most from middle-class families, finds itself at the bottom, there is no explanation to provide solace. In its place there is, quite reasonably, a sense of victimhood. Whatever explanation one gives for the Spanish crisis -- the stupidity of politicians, the laziness of the public, the greed of bankers or whatever else -- the generation that is bearing the burden is the only one that is not guilty -- at least not yet.

This -- being the victim in personal calamity shared by half a generation -- is the foundation not just of political instability but also for the politics of rage. The older middle-class citizens, with the lives they thought they had secured shattered, hurled into the ranks of the permanently impoverished, represent the vanguard, if you will. But those who will never live the lives they thought they would, they are the explosive mass.

European Denial

I think the reason things are so calm -- occasional riots hardly count -- is that no one really believes that they won't awake from the nightmare. There is a firm belief that this period will end. The denial of what has happened is not confined to Spain. In speaking to a German, he declared my view that the European system is broken as "scandalous." A moderate official in the European Union, he became choleric at my assertion that countries such as Spain are being plunged into the kind of hell that creates political monstrosities in Europe. For him, the critical thing was that the banks were no more stable than ever. He was simply dismissive of unemployment as the problem. Most people dismiss my views with aplomb, without breaking into a sweat. I have learned that on the rare instance when I cause apoplexy, it's because what I have said is not too far from the other person's fears.

Far more interesting than the German official was the Spanish official at the European Union. He was equally enraged when I argued that the social (it is not beyond either a financial or economic) crisis was not going to be solved in the current framework. In almost the same words -- and the exact spirit -- as the German, he insisted that the problem would not only be solved but that he was working on it day and night and was very close to a resolution. From this I conclude that it is perhaps not just the Germans but the entire EU apparatus that either really believes a solution is imminent or simply doesn't want to consider the consequences of failure.

Another Spaniard, this one not a government official, said he missed Francisco Franco, the fascist dictator who won the Spanish Civil War and governed for decades. I was surprised to say the least, since Spain under Franco was even poorer than it is today. He explained that he missed Franco because he knew how to tell the Germans to go to hell. When Hitler asked Franco to join him in World War II, Franco refused. The Spaniards' desire to tell the Germans to go to hell is too easy. Even if this was all Germany's fault, which it isn't, Spain's problem wouldn't be solved.

The German problem is the European problem and vice versa, and so it has been for a long time. Ever since 1871, when Germany was unified, Germany and Europe have been struggling with the question of how to live with each other. They thought they had found the answer in the European Union -- and maybe they will, but not yet. Europe does not know how to live with a Germany that uses the free trade zone to surge its exports while blaming Europe for being lazy and shiftless. Germany does not know how to live with a Europe that does not see that all of its problems are due to its lack of industriousness.

Of course, to our 22-year-old in Spain, the debate has become irrelevant. He is broke, scared and bored -- not something you want a mass of young men to be. That is the point at which history turns. Over time, they become men with nothing to lose; they become violent men, trying to reshape the order by any means necessary. Looking around the violent parts of the world, it is young men with nothing to lose and fantasies of glory, led by older men who understand them and their needs, who wage the civil wars that tear countries apart.

The same happened in Europe after World War I. Sometimes the disaffected youth turn to crime, sometimes they turn to political crime and sometimes they become a political party. In Europe, it was a generation that felt betrayed by World War I, then an older generation crushed by unemployment and inflation and finally a younger generation with nothing left to lose. Then came World War II and the stunned realization that there were indeed things left to lose.

Driving in Spain, things look quiet, neat and empty. But in that emptiness there is something ominous, perhaps not so much post-apocalyptic as pre-apocalyptic. Spain is still under control, and the European elite still believe an answer will be found. But I don't see the path that leads to the redemption of a generation's hopes. There is time, but in my mind there isn't enough. And given the attitude of the Eurocrats I have met, there is no sense among the elite that time is running out.

George Friedman is chairman of Stratfor. Reprinted with permission.

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https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/commentaryanalysis/the-black-banner-in-tunisia

Hussein Ibish
May 21, 2013

The black banner in Tunisia
Al-Qaeda-affiliate Ansar al-Sharia is demonstrating an alarming growth in stature and capabilities

The Tunisian group Ansar al-Sharia is about as close as one could fear to being an al-Qaeda-front organization operating freely in an Arab country. And it's on the move.

For months, Ansar al-Sharia and its allies have been violently harassing Tunisia’s mainstream society and troika government led by Ennahda, the Muslim Brotherhood-style party. But now it has welcomed, if not indeed forced, an open confrontation.

As ever, Tunisia is just ahead of the curve in the "Arab Spring." The confrontation between Ansar al-Sharia and Ennahda illustrates a potential fault line within the Arab Muslim religious right throughout the region.

Salafist groups, including Salafist-Jihadist and takfiri organizations like Ansar al-Sharia, may agree with less extreme Islamists about many things in theory. But in practice, they always find them both a political obstacle and insufficiently "Islamic." Since they rely on literalism, militancy, categorical assertions, and extremism virtually unrestrained by almost any pragmatic considerations, such organizations will invariably find the power-oriented political realism of Brotherhood-style parties to be religiously and politically objectionable. More importantly, they will see political benefits in attacking them rhetorically and, eventually, literally.

That's exactly what is happening in Tunisia. Ansar al-Sharia, which does not hide its links to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and proudly flies the gruesome black banner of Salafist-Jihadism, sought to hold their annual gathering in Tunis again this year. The group's organizers predicted a massive turnout of 40,000 people. Even if they were overestimating participation by double, or indeed quadruple, the actual likely turnout, this was an extremely disturbing prospect for the Tunisian government and mainstream society alike.

Ansar al-Sharia has been growing ever more brazen and militant in recent months. The group is no longer satisfied with attacking "un-Islamic" cultural expressions such as cinemas, art galleries, literary festivals, and bars. Instead it has been adopting a much more openly Salafist-Jihadist, as opposed to simply Salafist, rhetoric, replete with implicit and explicit calls to violence. Its determination to challenge the government, and even set the stage for civil conflict, became impossible to ignore.

Under conditions of growing instability in the country, exacerbated by continued economic woes and other stressors, the government banned the Tunis meeting on the grounds that Ansar al-Sharia is not a legally recognized organization in the country. In response, the group shifted its gathering to the "holy city" of Kairouan. The government banned that meeting as well, and brought a major security presence to bear in order to enforce its decision.

The resulting violent confrontation outside the ancient and revered Kairouan Great Mosque left one person dead under murky circumstances. But two things were clear. First, the government was able to enforce its decisions, but only through brute force. And second, Ansar al-Sharia felt politically and organizationally capable of, and interested in, confronting the government and its security forces.

The implicit message is also clear. The government was able to win this battle, but it's losing the war to ensure that Ansar Al-Sharia remains a largely impotent and fringe movement.

A grim set of factors is combining to empower this openly and extremely radical group. Ongoing economic distress has undermined the government, including Ennahda, and strengthened the impact of Ansar al-Sharia's aggressive social services program. Ennahda's political compromises with its coalition partners undermine its ability to appeal to Muslim extremists who find conciliation, even in the service of gaining political power, to be distasteful at best. Instability, and the growing power of their Salafist-Jihadist allies in Libya and the Sahel region, have provided Ansar Al-Sharia a new degree of strategic depth.

And, most worryingly of all, Ansar al-Sharia and other Salafist-Jihadist groups around the region are using the war in Syria in the same way similar ideologues used the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Ansar al-Sharia has reportedly been a huge, and possibly decisive, factor in sending some 3,000 Tunisian militants to fight in Syria. This not only increases its political credentials in Islamist constituencies; much more importantly it’s starting to provide them with a growing stream of battle-trained and hardened cadres ready for armed conflict under the black banner.

The discovery of Ansar al-Sharia minefields along the Algerian border has been taken by almost everyone, including Ennahda, to confirm that this is actually beginning to happen. Ansar al-Sharia now openly warns of civil war.

This is a confrontation Ennahda sought to avoid. Its leader, Rachid Ghannouchi, last year asked Salafists, including associates of Ansar al-Sharia, to give his party peace and quiet to secure Islamist control over the police and military. But clearly Ansar al-Sharia is in no mood for patience.

The un-strategic, self-defeating Salafist-Jihadist mentality typically combines violent extremism with the lack of political judgment characteristic of most real fanatics. Yet, for now, Ansar al-Sharia appears to be entitled to an alarming degree of growing self-confidence.

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-21/syria-rebels-threaten-to-wipe-out-shiite-alawite-towns.html


Syria Rebels Threaten to Wipe Out Shiite, Alawite Towns
By Dana El Baltaji - May 21, 2013 6:08 AM PT
Comments 4

Communities inhabited by Shiite Muslims and President Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite minority will be “wiped off the map” if the strategic city of Al-Qusair in central Syria falls to government troops, rebel forces said.

“We don’t want this to happen, but it will be a reality imposed on everyone,” Colonel Abdel-Hamid Zakaria, a spokesman for the Free Syrian Army in Turkey, told Al-Arabiya television yesterday. “It’s going to be an open, sectarian, bloody war to the end.”

Fighter planes and heavy artillery pounded the city today, the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in an e-mail. It said two people were killed during clashes between rebels and government troops backed by Hezbollah fighters, bringing the death toll from clashes at Al-Qusair in the last three days to more than 90.

Al-Qusair is close to the highway linking Damascus to the coast and has been a conduit for weapons from Lebanon to the rebels. The government offensive began with attacks on villages on the city’s outskirts last month.

Bassam al-Dada, a political adviser to the Free Syrian Army, said from Istanbul yesterday that Assad’s forces were still at the outskirts of the city. “Our people are still fighting inside and very strongly, but it’s not an easy situation,” he said.
‘Major Setback’

“Failure to hold the town would be a major setback for opposition forces, impacting their ability to maintain clear lines of supply between safe havens in Lebanon and combat units in Syria,” said David Hartwell, senior Middle East analyst at IHS Jane’s.

The conflict in Syria, which began in March 2011, is increasingly dividing the country and the surrounding region along religious lines.

The Shiite Lebanese militia Hezbollah and Shiite-led Iran have been key allies of the Assad government, whose upper ranks come from the Alawite sect, derived from Shiite Islam. Leaders of the rebel army and political opposition are mostly Sunni, and they are backed by key Sunni powers including Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince and Minister of Defense Salman Bin Abdul Aziz is in Turkey to meet President Abdullah Gul and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu today, according to Turkey’s state-run Anatolia news agency. The trip comes days after Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan met U.S. President Barack Obama.
Emergency Meeting

The Arab League will hold an emergency meeting today to discuss Syria at the request of Qatar, Egypt’s state-run Middle East News Agency reported. Talks will focus on Al-Qusair and the participation of Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in the fighting, the agency cited an unidentified league official as saying. Hezbollah is backed by Iran and is classified as a terrorist group by Israel and the U.S.

Hezbollah’s open involvement in the Syrian crisis is worrying because it pits the militia against Sunni extremist groups, according to Hartwell.

“While it may suit states such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia and even the United States to see this type of sectarian conflict develop as a means of retarding the regional influence of Iran (via Hezbollah) and al-Qaeda, the results in terms of long-term regional instability could be dramatic,” Hartwell said in an e-mailed note.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is returning to the Middle East this week and is seeking to promote peace talks. Syrian opposition leaders, due to meet May 23 in Istanbul to choose a new leader, have rejected attendance at any peace conference that includes Assad or his inner circle.

The Syrian uprising began with peaceful protests that evolved into a civil war after the government began attacking the demonstrators. Radical Islamists, some with ties to al-Qaeda, have since joined the fight against Assad.

To contact the reporter on this story: Dana El Baltaji in Dubai at delbaltaji@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew J. Barden at barden@bloomberg.net

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http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2013/05/20/for-russia-syria-is-not-in-the-middle-east/

For Russia, Syria is not in the Middle East
By Brenda Shaffer
May 20, 2013

A string of leaders and senior emissaries, seeking to prevent further escalation of the Syria crisis, has headed to Moscow recently to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin. First, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, then British Prime Minister David Cameron, next Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and now, most recently, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon These leaders see Russia as the key to resolving the Syria quandary.

But to get Russia to cooperate on any stabilization plan, the United States and its allies will have to take into account Russia’s significant interests in the Mediterranean region.

Moscow’s refusal thus far to act on Syria seems puzzling. Russia has let other of its Middle East client regimes fall without much action on its part in the past. Why is Syria different to Moscow than those other Russian allies in the Middle East? Because, in Russia’s view, the outcome in Syria affects Moscow’s core strategic interests – including its global naval strategy and energy exports.

To understand Moscow’s policy toward Syria, it is important to understand that Russia sees Syria as part of its Mediterranean policy and not a part of the Middle East. The Arab Middle East has been a relatively low priority in Russia’s foreign policy. The Mediterranean, however, and especially the Eastern Mediterranean region, is a policy priority for Moscow.

During the winter, when most of its ports freeze and are not accessible, Russia’s warm Black Sea port is the country’s lifeline and critical to its oil export business. Thus, Moscow’s ability to keep the Mediterranean open to uninhibited Russian shipping and naval activity is a top policy priority.

Russia’s naval presence in Syria supports and provides an anchor and protection for its activity in the Eastern Mediterranean, especially in the energy sector. In order to get Russia on board in resolving the Syrian crisis, it is important to grasp its vital Eastern Mediterranean interests.

In diplomatic conversations with Moscow, Russia’s concerns should be recognized and discussed. A policy should be designed, for example, that would allow Russia to maintain its naval presence in the region.

Russia’s naval fleet is a dominant presence in the Eastern Mediterranean, and Russia is the major player in oil and gas markets throughout the region, especially in Turkey, Italy and Greece. Russia is now the lead bidder to gain control of Greece’s gas transmission system. It is also attempting to gain a foothold in Israel’s and Cyprus’s newfound natural gas resources. Russian companies have significant investments in the region and possess critical infrastructure. Indeed, Russia offered Cyprus a large loan in 2011 to protect its own investments on the island and to lure Nicosia to orient toward Moscow.

Moscow also has influence in the domestic politics in many of the regions’ states because of its close relationships with local political elites (for example, in Italy and Israel) and through the increasing numbers of Russian nationals and immigrants in countries across the region. There are now, for example, roughly a million Russian immigrants in Israel.

Washington and its allies might consider making a concession to Moscow and also refrain from undermining Assad’s regime in Syria, while getting explicit recognition from Moscow that it would, in turn, abstain from undermining the stability of U.S. allies in other regions, such as the Baltics or Caucasus.

The United States and the European Union may not like it that Russia is a thorn in their side in a number of regions, but when Russia’s interests are not recognized by the West, Moscow shows its displeasure by retaliating against U.S. allies around the globe. When the Bush administration, for example, ignored Moscow’s requests not to recognize Kosovo, Moscow responded by destabilizing neighboring Georgia in 2008.

If its interests are ignored, Moscow will find the outlet for influence against U.S. interests in other arenas, especially those bordering Russia.

Russia might have only relative power in comparison to the United States, but in many regions, it has more “relevant” power. Thus, in certain regions in the world, Russia can both contribute and undermine U.S. policy goals. With that in mind, its interests should be recognized in order get its cooperation on a plan to stabilize Syria.

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U.S. Must Exploit Hezbollah’s Vulnerability
Max Boot | @MaxBoot 05.21.2013 - 12:10 PM

At the beginning of the Syrian civil war, many of Bashar Assad’s longtime allies were wary of openly supporting a discredited dictator who was slaughtering his own people. Hamas, which had long maintained a headquarters in Damascus, quietly sulked out of town. Hezbollah, which is tied by an umbilical cord of supplies to Damascus, kept its distance too. But with the Assad regime showing signs of hanging on after more than two years of combat, Hezbollah, and its patrons in Iran, have been more open in their support for the regime. Hundreds of Hezbollah fighters are now fighting alongside Syrian troops in the critical battle for the town of Qusayr near the major city of Homs. Dozens of “martyrs” are coming home to Lebanon in body bags.

By thus raising the stakes in Syria, Hezbollah is leaving itself open to serious blowback. Its credibility in Lebanon has always depended on its posture as an anti-Israel force; its prestige soared when it chased the IDF out of southern Lebanon in 2000 and when it stood up to Israeli attacks in 2006. But now in Syria, Hezbollah fighters are battling not the “accursed” Jews but fellow Muslims who are determined to rid their country of an unelected and unpopular leader.

Hezbollah is thus suffering a loss of credibility and prestige, especially among the Sunni majority in the Arab world which sympathizes with the largely Sunni Syrian insurgency battling against a minority Alawite regime. Hezbollah is seen not as a pan-Arab army but as a sectarian, pro-Shiite force. That is a vulnerability that the U.S. and its allies should exploit to try to loosen Hezbollah’s death grip on Lebanese politics.

In this regard it would help enormously if Hezbollah were not successful in its efforts to keep the Assad regime in power. A failed intervention in Syria would do tremendous damage to its standing in Lebanon, while a successful intervention would allow it to maintain its grip on power by safeguarding the arms pipeline flowing from Tehran via Damascus.

That makes it all the more imperative that the U.S. do more to ensure that Hezbollah loses in Syria–not only by providing arms to vetted rebel factions but also by employing our airpower to ground Assad’s air force and thus removing a crucial regime advantage. Time is slipping away as Assad recovers on the battlefield. If we don’t act now, the Tehran-Damascus-Bekaa axis (the Bekaa Valley is the birthplace of Hezbollah) could emerge stronger than ever.

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Federalism could help ease Iraq's dangerous pressures

Hassan Hassan
May 22, 2013

There is a certain power to the word taqseem in Arabic. It means any form of partition of a country, and has a cloud of connotations that can invite memories of colonial times and conspiracies by western-backed religious or ethnic minorities.

That is why it is interesting to observe that the idea of decentralisation is, for the first time, being pushed by Iraq's Sunnis, who are a majority in all Muslim countries except Iran and Iraq.

Interest in federalism is not new in Iraq. It has been growing almost since the prime minister, Nouri Al Maliki, assumed the position of interior minister in 2010, as his attempt to centralise power grew more pronounced. Since then, he has marginalised Sunni-majority areas, politically and economically.

What is new, however, is that federalism offers a solution to a problem that is now more urgent than ever. Decentralised governance appears to be the only way to avoid an inevitable return to the sectarian abyss, one likely to be even more deadly than the events of 2006.

Iraq's current crisis, with ominous bombings targeting both Sunni and Shia areas, is essentially caused by the stagnant political system, not by Mr Al Maliki, who has a popular base that cannot be ignored. The power-sharing system set in motion (or in stone, as it turned out) by the 2010 constitution has led to economic and political paralysis, leaving Sunni Iraqis feeling that they are disenfranchised, second-class citizens.

Sunnis feel that the state failed to protect them and that the central government is and always will be controlled by sectarian parties that oppress or marginalise them. It is only a matter of time before Sunni-majority areas explode.

In the current political order, the idea of coexistence is an illusion, plain and simple. Deep Sunni resentment of the central government is shown by the fact that extremist forces are side by side with pro-change protesters and tribal notables who once fought them alongside the central government.

To be sure, Sunnis are still deeply divided over the idea of federation. Sheikh Abdulmalek Saadi, an influential Sunni cleric and mufti, has declared any calls for federalism to be haram, or religiously prohibited. Instead, he calls for dialogue with the Maliki government to address Sunnis' legitimate demands, including anti-Baathification and antiterror laws that are seen as designed to target them.

On the other hand, this month residents of Fallujah held an unprecedented conference on the merits of federalism. The way one speaker argued for federalism underlines the psychological bias against the idea: he gave the example of five brothers in one house - as they grow up and marry and have children, their infighting becomes intolerable.

"What's the solution?" he asked. "The clear solution, which we all know, is that the brothers move out and each has his own house. That way, they will be able to bring up their children as they wish, and protect themselves and prosper."

The calls for federalism in Sunni-majority areas are increasingly wrapped in sectarian language, which can be understood in the current context of religious polarisation. If the situation persists, this can lead only to greater radicalisation of the Sunni populace - which was once predominately secular - as Sunnis find shelter in traditional tribal and religious alliances.

Federation has security and economic aspects. Would the Sunni population, whose technocrats have long been targeted by government security forces or compelled to leave the country, be able to handle security in their provincial areas? Will the power vacuum be filled by better-armed extremist forces?

These factors must be considered before any transition to a federal system. But it is clear that the persistent crisis is empowering extremists.

When Sunnis handle their own affairs in their regions, they are most likely to repudiate extremism. The marriage of convenience between tribes and jihadists would almost definitely break as Sunnis take up ownership of their own regions.

The rampant corruption of the central government, and the lack of political will, impedes progress in Sunni-majority areas. Services and investment are desperately needed. Provincial governments, which would receive their shares of the national wealth, could answer to their local constituencies and would therefore be more likely to devote themselves to good governance and development in their regions, along with security - as demonstrated by the largely autonomous Kurdish north.

And yet, even if Sunni Iraqis agreed on governing themselves, Mr Al Maliki remains ready to strike down any such proposal. However, if there were a Sunni consensus on the issue, Mr Al Maliki would have little leeway to continue to reject it. Federalism is spelt out in the 2010 constitution and the executive procedures law No. 13, 2008, a constitution that the prime minister tirelessly cites to justify his authoritarian moves.

Federalism makes economic, political and security sense for Iraq, for both Sunni-majority areas and the nation at large. In the current toxic environment, a renewed sectarian war seems all too likely. Paradoxically, federation could bring Iraqis closer to each in the long run, as they start to take ownership of their regions and then understand that they need each other for trade and security.

Only when the brothers move into separate houses do they start to value their kinship.

hhassan@thenational.ae

On Twitter: @hhassan140

Related

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Kim Jong-Un Is No Master Strategist
By Zachary Keck
May 22, 2013

Despite their reputation for irrationality, North Korean leaders have always been masterful strategists.

The country’s founding leader and eternal president, Kim Il-Sung, masterfully exploited the Sino-Soviet split throughout the Cold War to extract aid from both without having to offer much in return. When the foundation of that strategy collapsed with the end of the Cold War, Kim Jong-Il turned to stoking China and America’s deep-seated fears of instability and nuclear weapons proliferation respectively, as well as South Korea’s longing for reunification, to continue receiving the aid that North Korea’s economy had become dependent on.

Indeed, for a state in as precarious of a situation as North Korea finds itself in, having a prudent grand strategy becomes something of a necessity. And yet it seems increasingly apparent that Kim Jong-Un lacks the skills as a strategist that his grandfather and father relied on to sustain the regime.

It’s too early to make a definitive judgment on whether North Korea has a game plan for ending the current crisis on terms favorable to itself. Time and again the country has shown itself quite capable at guiding seemingly random events towards a desired endgame. That being said, although the belligerent rhetoric succeeded in getting the world’s attention, it never resulted in any kind of tangible benefit for the North.

In fact, given the intense diplomacy that has continued to take place between South Korea, the U.S., China, and, to some extent, Japan, North Korea appears to have only succeeded in further uniting its adversaries and allies against it, while also losing some of its best sources of hard currencies by closing the Kaesong complex and coming under Chinese sanctions. Even Russia has largely remained on the same page as the other parties of the six-party talks as evident by its desire to hold a summit with South Korea on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in St. Petersburg in September.

North Korea’s actions from the past week appear to be desperate attempts to salvage some gains from the crisis. This was clearly the aim of inviting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to send an envoy to Pyongyang to discuss the issue of North Korea’s past abductions of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s. Once again, Pyongyang is falling back on its long-time successful tactic of exploiting slight differences in its adversaries’ priorities.

Beyond that, however, North Korea’s actions appear to be doomed to fail. One example of this was its launching of six short range missiles over the weekend. Coming on the heels of its increasingly belligerent threats and actions this spring, these missile tests failed to elicit much in the way of a reaction from any of the parties involved. The South Korean government, for instance, calmly told the public to simply expect more tests.

It’s possible these tests are only the beginning of a new campaign of provocations. Then again, they may very well not be. South Korea is simply unwilling to tolerate the kind of provocations that it did in 2010 without launching a devastating response in return. This point was made unambiguous by President Park Geun-Hye and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the height of the latest crisis. North Korean leaders quite possibly understand that attitudes on the other side of the Demilitarized Zone have changed and have tailored their actions accordingly. In doing so, they lack the option of taking actions that might break the status-quo North Korea currently faces.

China is unlikely to be of much help to the North. Although Chinese leaders will not place the kind of economic pressure on Pyongyang that might force its hand, they are also increasingly uninterested in protecting the regime from facing retribution for its actions. Last month JoongAng Ilbo reported that China refused to send a high-level envoy to North Korea as Pyongyang requested, which seems plausible given that the request Beijing’s last envoy brought to North Korea — namely, don’t test a ballistic missile — was defied in less than two weeks.

North Korea’s seizure of a Chinese fishing boat was likely an attempt to force Beijing to deal with Kim Jong-Un. It could work as it has in the past. But North Korea today has to contend with a new variable it hasn’t had to in the past, Chinese social media. The fierce criticism of North Korea on China’s social media websites following the boat’s seizure is just as likely to force Beijing to take a hardline stance with North Korea, rather than a conciliatory one as Pyongyang likely hoped. Indeed, the added variable of Chinese public opinion could complicate Kim Jong-Un’s ability to coerce China into giving into his demands for years to come.

Hummm....

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http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2013/05/20/2013052001158.html

China 'Has Secret Plan to Replace N.Korean Leader'

China is secretly pursuing plans to install North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's older brother Kim Jong-nam at the head of the renegade country in case the regime collapses, Germany’s Deutsche Welle reported Thursday.

Under the headline "Is China Seeking Regime Change in North Korea," Deutsche Welle cited intelligence sources as saying Beijing "has a contingency plan in place for when Kim Jong-un's control over the country crumbles." It is "quietly encouraging regime change and is grooming Kim's brother, Kim Jong-nam to take over his role."

Kim Jong-nam's relative obscurity at home is a problem. "Even residents of Pyongyang know very little" about him, according to the report.

The broadcaster said North Korea's sudden throttling back of its aggressive rhetoric and provocations has led to suggestions that "Pyongyang has realized it has pushed its only ally in the region to the brink of severing its friendship."

One sign that North Korea is aiming to appease China was Pyongyang’s announcement early last week that it appointed Jang Jong-nam, a little-known commander of an army corps in coastal Kangwon Province, to replace the elderly hawk previously in charge of the armed forces.

There is more evidence that China is slowly increasing pressure on North Korea "as more state-run financial institutions sever their links with banks in North Korea," the German broadcaster added.

Read this article in Korean
englishnews@chosun.com / May 20, 2013 12:26 KST

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http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion...window-on-chinas-defense-policy/#.UZv4Qti5KCl

Editorials
Window on China’s defense policy
May 21, 2013

Last month, China released its white paper on national defense, the eighth since Beijing began releasing the document in 1998. The white paper is invariably an exercise in frustration: China’s detractors are always disappointed by the document, unsatisfied with its contents and the many questions it leaves unanswered.

The Chinese government adopts an aggrieved tone in responses to questions that highlight its flaws rather than acknowledging the distance Beijing has traveled since it began the white paper process.

Defense white papers are intended to offer insight into a government’s security and defense policies. They provide transparency about planning and purposes by facilitating the understanding of the mind-set that guides national defense policy and identifying threats and challenges, and the specific measures taken to address them.

Thus, this white paper, “The Diversified Employment of China’s Armed Forces,” outlines what it calls “a new security concept” (which China has in fact articulated for years). This concept rests on pillars of mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality and coordination, and links China’s national security to that of its partners by embracing comprehensive security, common security and cooperative security.

Of course, China is not prepared to entrust its security to the benevolence of other nations. The white paper confirms that China will build a strong national defense and armed forces that are “commensurate with China’s international standing and meet the needs of its security and development interests.”

In a world characterized by multiple and complicated security threats and challenges — and the “arduous task to safeguard its national unification, territorial integrity and development interests” — that means the modernization of China’s military will continue.

To allay concerns about the expansion of those capabilities, the white paper insists that China’s foreign and defense policies are “defensive in nature.”

It reiterates the claim that China “does not interfere in the internal affairs of other countries” and pledges, in echoes of previous documents and countless government officials, that “China will never seek hegemony or behave in a hegemonic manner, nor will it engage in military expansion.”

In a departure from previous editions, this year’s white paper provides actual numbers of military personnel, designations of the force organization and structure, and details of China’s missile forces.

According to the white paper, there are some 850,000 men and women in the People’s Liberation Army, organized in 18 corps and brigades under seven military area commands.

The PLA Navy has 235,000 officers and men, and commands three fleets. There are 398,000 officers and personnel in the PLA Air Force, with an air command in each of the seven military area commands. The report also devotes attention to the Second Artillery Force, which commands and controls China’s strategic forces — its nuclear and conventional missile forces.

Little in the white paper is surprising. The details of forces and structure are appreciated, but the government has in many respects merely confirmed the work of independent research institutes.

More interesting, while also somewhat conventional, is the description of the external security environment. The white paper condemns “some country” that has strengthened its military alliances in the Asia Pacific region, “expanded its military presence in the region, and frequently makes the situation there tenser.”

The United States is not identified by name, but it is the only country that fits the bill. It is not clear which is more revealing of Chinese thinking: the description of U.S. policy or the reluctance to name Washington.

It is noteworthy that while many countries complain about questions surrounding the U.S. “rebalance” to Asia, China seems certain about its intentions and purposes.

A second important element of the external security environment is territorial disputes that China has with its neighbors, and curious by contrast with the previous discussion is the characterization of Japan as “making trouble over the issue of the Diaoyu Islands.” Beijing has on occasion linked the two developments, arguing that the U.S. rebalance has emboldened governments in Asia to challenge Chinese claims.

Whatever the cause, these disputes provide a rationale for the relentless modernization of China’s maritime and marine capabilities, and underscore the importance given to the PLA Navy’s ability to project power and protect China’s national interests farther from home.

The launch of the aircraft carrier Liaoning in September 2012 is part of this effort; Chinese officials now talk about building a second, more powerful carrier.

White papers are intended to provide context for defense thinking and spending, and answer the question “how much is enough?” This white paper does the first, but not the second.

One issue that has surfaced in discussion of the document is the absence of China’s pledge of “no first use” (NFU) of nuclear weapons, the mainstay of the country’s strategic policies.

Foreign security specialists ask whether this omission signals a shift in Chinese policy; officialdom in Beijing adamantly denied any change, noting that the white paper is written thematically and the NFU policy did not fit this structure.

But there is a debate in China about nuclear doctrine. The white paper could do a long way toward its intended purpose by acknowledging that fact and identifying the contours of that discussion. That would shed light onto Chinese strategic thinking and provide the transparency that can then provide a foundation for discussions with other nations and build the mutual trust that China professes to cherish.